LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. L Copyright No. 

SheltJ^LfL 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



THE MESSAGE 

OF THE 

WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



THE MESSAGE 

OF THE 

WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



REPRINTED FROM " THE OUTLOOK " 



NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

LONDON AND BOMBAY 
1898 

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Copyright, 1897, by 
THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 



Copyright, 1898, by 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



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CONTENTS 



JUDAISM . i 

• By Rabbi Gustav Gottheil, D.D. 

BUDDHISM 23 

By Professor T. W. Rhys Davids, Ph.D., LL.D. 

CONFUCIANISM 41 

By the Rev. Arthur H. Smith 

Author of " Chinese Characteristics" 

MOHAMMEDANISM 65 

By the Rev. George Washburn, D.D. 

President of Robert College, Constantinople 

BRAHMANISM S6 

By Charles R. Lanman 

Professor of Sanskrit in Harvard University 

CHRISTIANITY 102 

By Lyman* Abbott, D.D, 



THE MESSAGE OF 
THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 

I 

JUDAISM 



By Rabbi Gustav Gottheil, D.D. 

The perseverance of the Jew and his 
Judaism is in itself a mission to the 
world. That it is the wonder of history 
is generally allowed; but why should a 
wonder be wrought, if not to teach and 
enforce a lesson ? Goethe looked upon 
it in that light; for he wrote: " In re- 
gard to independence, firmness, courage 
— and where these qualities do not suf- 
fice, tenacity — the people of Israel is 
without compare. It is the most endur- 




i 



2 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



ing race on earth, which was, is, or shall 
be, that it may glorify the name of 
Jehovah forever. It is for this reason 
that (in the pictorial representation of 
history which meets the eye of the son 
of Meister in the Octagon hall) we have 
placed Israel as the great ensample and 
central picture which the others sur- 
round as a frame merely. 99 The wonder 
is justified in our eyes when we remem- 
ber that his " tenacity " is the very sin 
which the Church cannot forgive. She 
has done all she can, and much more 
than she ever ought to have done, to 
make the wonder cease; but " the arm 
of the Lord is not shortened to save. " 
Officially she has not changed her atti- 
tude toward Israel; she continues to 
place his mission against the mission of 
God; but silently, and in the hearts of 
her most thoughtful sons and daughters, 
the question has sprung up, and is press- 
ing for an answer more urgently day by 
day: How was it possible for these scat- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



tered remnants, numerically so weak, and 
that small number broken up and scat- 
tered to the four winds, to " stand and 
to withstand" for so many centuries? 
To stand, with every known support of 
a nation struck away; with every na- 
tional bond rent asunder; without an 
organization of any kind, without a 
priesthood, without a rallying-point or 
outward symbol of unity, national or 
spiritual ? Here are ten millions of peo- 
ple, strewn over vast areas of lands, with 
whole continents and oceans between the 
" disjecta membra, " yet owning an affin- 
ity that has never been found wanting in 
the hour of need. This wonder has been 
so exasperating to the enemies of Israel 
that they invented all sorts of devilish 
plots to account for it; plots that have 
now been brooded over by the clumsy 
emissaries of Satan for centuries, but 
never were consummated yet. Mean- 
while these mysterious men and women 
have lived their honest lives and have 



4 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 

passed away like other sons and daughters 
of Adam, have inscribed names on the 
roll of benefactors that yield to none in 
lustre, and not a few of them have given 
their lives in the defence of the country 
which they called their own. How 
could a race, so situated and condi- 
tioned, " withstand " the ceaseless and 
merciless war made upon it for so long a 
time ? Needs not that I open that reg- 
ister once more — it is sufficiently known. 
True, their disruption was their building 
up, wherein we see the hand of Provi- 
dence working its own ends irresistibly: 
fractions only could be destroyed, or, if 
exiled, find a refuge somewhere on 
earth ; the rare instances in which breth- 
ren refused to open their doors to the 
fugitives or even showed selfish coldness 
are branded in Jewish records with an 
indelible mark of infamy. This was in 
cases of open war; but open war was 
not the hardest test of Jewish tenacity 
and courage ; to be slain not the worst 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 5, 



of fates; for the martyr's crown casta 
halo around the darkness of the grave. 
To live, aye ! to live under the most 
refined wickedness of persecution was 
more bitter than death — was, did I say ? 
Is, to this hour. Very recently one who 
knows what he is testifying to, and may 
be fully trusted, said to me: " Sir, the 
distress, the poverty, the want to which 
the Jews encaged in the Russian Pale 
have been reduced is appalling; it is be- 
yond my power of description ; and there 
is but one cry sounding from all letters 
received: ' For God's sake take us any- 
where you can, so that we have enough 
to eat and to drink.' " But where such 
distress does not exist, nay, even w r here 
plenty reigns and the political rights of 
the Jew are not questioned, his race and 
his religion are the gall and wormwood in 
the cup of the Jew. Without doubt, 
whether we consider the length of time, 
or the severity of the trial, or the ab- 
sence of friend and comforter, no other 



6 THE WORLD 'S RELIGIONS 



faith has been tried as has that of Israel. 
Others have had their periods of perse- 
cution and oppression, but they were 
followed by triumph and dominion ; 
others have covered the pages of history 
with martyrs and professors who proved 
invincible under their tortures, and who 
went to the stake singing psalms and 
giving praise to God that they were 
found worthy to seal the truth with their 
blood; who better than the Jew can 
honor their memory ? But, with the 
exception of two or three interruptions, 
the way of the Jew has been a " Via 
Dolorosa" from the thirteenth to the 
nineteenth century ; and, in the words of 
his own inimitable elegist, he can say, 
" Behold, is there a grief like mine ? " 

Afl this would be wonderful, even if Jew 
and Judaism were now in their dotage ; if 
their energy were spent, and they were 
listless as to the present, aimless as to the 
• future; if Byron's word were true: 
Israel has the grave. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 7 



But the outcry against the Jew is that 
his strength is far in excess of his num- 
ber, that his ambition reaches to heights 
to which he is not entitled ; his successes 
are the despair of his non-Jewish com- 
petitors. And as regards his religion, it 
is safe to say that it is, at the present 
day, the most active and energetic in the 
work of reform. The oldest of churches 
offers the heartiest welcome to the latest 
born of ideals. Nor is it a mere nega- 
tive reform which is pursued ; I mean, 
one that is content with the lopping of 
dead branches and the leaving undone of 
things that have fallen out of joint with 
the time. Young branches are being 
constantly grafted on the old stem which 
is found to be still full of sap, capable 
to nourish and prosper the fresh shoots. 
Old liturgies are expurgated and new 
ones composed ; rituals and ceremonials 
are being modernized ; new hymns writ- 
ten, or borrowed from other churches 
without compunction — sometimes even 



8 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



with their melodies, if text and tone ap- 
pear to be made for each other ; even new 
days and seasons are fixed for public wor- 
ship. In schools, seminaries, periodicals, 
religious literature, societies, charities — 
everywhere the breath of a new life is 
felt. And, more astonishing still, the 
soil of Palestine is being reclaimed by 
the hands of Jewish peasants and plant- 
ers; Jerusalem lifts her head once more 
and begins to lay aside her sackcloth and 
ashes — growing rapidly into a modern 
city. 

And — here the superlative of wonder 
fails me — next August, in this year 
eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, a 
congress of Jews from all parts of the 
world will meet at Munich, Bavaria, to 
discuss the whole of the Jewish question 
and the most effective way of settling it ; 
and also the question whether the found- 
ing of a Jewish State in Palestine is pos- 
sible — if possible, desirable — as a refuge 
for those Jews who are not permitted 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS g 



by the people among whom they live to 
assimilate with them in citizenship. 

Brief and summary as I desire to make 
this statement of the case, I cannot omit 
the fact that Judaism gave birth to two 
giant children, which cast their mother 
so far into the shade as regards numbers, 
power, wealth, brilliance, organization, 
and recognition in the world, that she 
can hardly be mentioned by their side. 
Well-nigh half of mankind live by a re- 
ligious faith Jewish at the core, yet that 
great outpouring of her strength has not 
diminished her own store ; the mother 
lives, and so far from preparing for her 
final exit, is girding up her loins to do 
and to dare yet more for humanity. She 
clings to her post as one of the path- 
finders for the arrival of the Messiah, 
whose authority will rest on the fact 
that there will be no questioning, no 
wrangling about it, that all the earth 
will answer in unison, " Blessed be 



io THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



he that cometh in the name of the 
Lord." 

And now I have been asked to offer 
an explanation of that wonder of his- 
tory. I frankly confess that I have none 
to offer, neither have I met with one 
who could do it for me. After searching 
and sounding and probing and listening 
on all sides, I still must bow my head 
before the Power that lives and moves in 
this great mystery. Happy I, if I may 
humbly trace some of the means by 
which the miracle was wrought and is 
being continued. I do so with fear and 
trembling; more than once did I lay 
down the pen in the hopeless sense of 
my insufficiency ; had I not feared that 
there was more cowardice than humility 
in this confession, I would never have 
pressed the pen back into the reluctant 
hand. I need both — the grace of God 
and the indulgence of the reader; and I 
ask for them in all sincerity and earnest- 
ness. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



ii 



I. — UNITY 

The taproot of Judaism is the idea of 
unity; the Rabbis understood this when 
they wrote on Israel's banner the words 
of their patriarch, the Deuteronomist, 
" Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, 
the Lord is one." In unity there is 
strength of both faith and faithfulness. 
In the one and one only God the sim- 
plest mind and the profoundest thinker 
meet together. The singer of the shep- 
herd psalm, that classical expression of 
childlike trust, says in song what Bruno 
and Spinoza say in their architectural 
systems. There is something grand and 
soul-subduing in that thought; and at 
the same time it allows a freedom of con- 
struction which keeps the soul in healthy 
activity and secures a sense of independ- 
ence and self-esteem. One God or 
none at all — the alternative is bracing 
and stimulating. The issue is not that 



12 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



of the Jew, but of thinking man all over 
the world, and has been so from the time 
he began to reflect on the problem. The 
Jew feels that he has a place, indisput- 
able and unavoidable, in the develop- 
ment of the human mind and the history 
of religion ; that he is fully entitled to it, 
and in holding fast to it he defends the 
native right of humanity. 

It has been said, and justly so, that it 
is the enemy that makes a nation. The 
pressure of defence and the dread of 
danger are needed to drive people to- 
gether and to create a sense of unity. 
Now, by the proclamation of the vanity 
of all idols and of all ideas of Deity 
other than the one Israel proclaimed, he 
provoked the whole world to enmity; 
and in proportion to this enormous pres- 
sure from all sides grew his power of 
adhesion and resistance. He was and is 
right in allowing no tampering with his 
foundation faith, under whatever pre- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



text. The term Monotheism he dislikes, 
because there lurks danger in it, as he 
sees clearly in the Trinitarian construc- 
tion of that term in Christianity. His 
feet planted on his ''Rock*' (God is 
called by that name in his Bible), he 
watches with sleepless eye every attempt 
to undermine his foothold. 

A Trinitarian belief is to him a disin- 
tegration of his clear and compact faith, 
and multiplies the arguments against 
God by three. It is the conception of 
unity, absolute, everlasting, unvarying, 
which alone can give us a perfect God ; 
for this could not be with imperfections 
and limitations in His being. If such 
appear to our view, the fault must lie in 
our vision, not in Him. 

And from this central idea a tendency 
towards unity went out like rays from 
the sun to pervade all Judaism. One 
people, the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob; one land, with one capital and 
one sanctuary, and in this one spot 



14 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



where the glory of God dwelt, visited by 
one man, once a year, on the unique 
fast-day of the year; one book, not the 
Bible, but the Law of Moses, the Torah, 
given through the prophet of whom it is 
written, There never arose another like 
him in Israel. One law for all, the 
stranger included, and — no monarchy; 
for a throne with a human being on it 
means division, not unity, as the very 
history of Israel proves better than 
any other national experience. Moses, 
incomparable fashioner of a nation and 
prince of legislators, wanted no dynasty ; 
and those who followed in his footsteps, 
how true they remained to his great 
idea! From Joshua to Samuel — these 
were much-disturbed times, and many 
saviors of the nation arose, but no throne 
was established till the people them- 
selves, in an evil hour, insisted on having 
one like other nations — and it was not 
long before the breach occurred that 
could never be healed again. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 15 



And so in the great outlook towards 
the consummation of Israel's oneness, 
the idea of unity, in heaven and on 
earth, if I may say so, appears triumphant 
at last. " In that day God will be one, 
and His name be one." Then God will 
burn the lip of nations and purify it that 
they shall all call upon the name of God 
and serve Him with one consent. Much 
more might be said on that point, but I 
must leave off here, and turn to what 
we must designate as the second great 
resource of Judaism; and that is: 



II. — DIRECTNESS 

Let the reader forbear criticism as to 
the name of this part of my statement ; 
I chose faute de mieux, and will explain 
at once that Judaism places the soul in 
direct, immediate relation to the Crea- 
tor. It offers no mediator, and hence 
has nothing corresponding to the Chris- 
tian conception of " a Church." The 



16 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



Jew must be his own bishop, his own 
pope. His Rabbi is no priest, and, with 
the exception of two or three instances 
in which a perfect knowledge of the law 
is absolutely required, there is no reli- 
gious function which the Jew cannot per- 
form legally and effectively for himself 
without the intercession of a Rabbi. 
Consistently with this religious democ- 
racy, the study of the Law, as ex- 
pounded in the Talmud and the Casu- 
ists, is declared to be a universal duty; 
nay, one of the chief obligations of the 
Jew. And so you might see, if you 
thought it worth your while to see it, on 
any morning, winter or summer, hun- 
dreds of the " old-fashioned ones " leave 
their homes at four in the morning to go 
to the Beth-Hamidrash, or home of re- 
ligious study, and spend the early hours 
of the day in that sacred pursuit, before 
they begin their wanderings or toilings 
to earn the pittances on which they and 
their families manage to live. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 17 

I do not underrate the enormous power 
which the idea of "a Church " as a 
divinely ordained institution is fitted to 
develop ; a thought of what Catholicism 
has achieved is enough to convince us of 
that. But, at the same time, according 
to the law of compensation and adjust- 
ment of the balance, the Church must 
exact obedience and submission, and 
deprecate self-reliance, the free exercise 
of reason. Judaism demands the latter, 
and trusts its fate to it. Any ten male 
Jews past the age of thirteen may form 
a body, entitled to all the rights and 
immunities of a congregation, and per- 
form public worship, wherever they may 
be and at whatever time they may desire 
it. Every synagogue is truly a people's 
church, and makes government not an 
easy matter by any means. The Rabbi 
is entirely thrown upon his own resources 
as regards weight and influence in the 
congregation. All attempts at ecclesias- 
tical organization have so far failed 
2 



1 8 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



among the Jewish ministry. It is not 
congenial to the spirit of Judaism; the 
merest approach to it is viewed with sus- 
picion. Whether modern times and al- 
tered conditions and ideas will work a 
change in that respect remains to be 
seen. So far the grand principle of 
Rabbi Chananyah ben Teradyon prevails : 
where two sit together and interchange 
words of the Law, the Shekinah is be- 
tween them ; nay, even where one sits 
alone and devoutly gives his mind to the 
study of the Law, the Divine Presence 
is with him, and he receives his full re- 
ward. 

III. — THIS-WORLDLINESS 

That which strikes me as a third pre- 
servative element in the constitution of 
Judaism must seem strange in the eye of 
the reader, inasmuch as it is everywhere 
considered and treated as a reproach and 
a deficiency — I mean its This-worldliness. 
Strange enough that a religion which ex- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



isted, and surely not idly, for a thousand 
years before the first faint mutterings of 
" another and a better world 99 are heard 
in its midst, should grow into the faith 
of martyrdom and outstrip all others in 
that regard! Yet so it is; and, what is 
more surprising still is that, despite the 
terrible denial which the Jew's experi- 
ence gave to his belief that God's justice 
rewards obedience to His Law with 
earthly happiness and well-being, he 
held fast to it, and, as it were, assisted 
God to make good His promises given in 
His Word. Even after he received and 
approved the outlook into a " Here- 
after," his faith in the " Here 99 suffered 
no diminution. It sometimes appears to 
me as if the Jew held it part of his 
mission to 

strive with might and main 
For worldly good and earthly gain 

so as to vindicate the ways of his God 
to man ; a mere fancy of mine, no 



20 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



doubt, but fancies are often only facts 
read in a peculiar way; and peculiar 
ways are not incongruous with a peculiar 
people ! 

However that may be, the truth re- 
mains the same: Judaism lays all stress 
upon religion as the wisest plan of 
spending this life well, and its kingdom 
of heaven meant a God's kingdom on 
earth, visible, tastable, measurable, cal- 
culable; thus remaining true to the con- 
ception of the Master of masters — the 
son of Amram, to whom cleanliness was 
godliness, and a healthful body the holi- 
est temple of a soul created in the im- 
age of God. I cannot imagine him as 
frowning at a good joke; and so I will 
revive here one made by " Kladde- 
radatsch" (the Berlin "Puck") when 
trichinae were first discovered as revel- 
ling in swine's flesh; he said of Moses: 
" Das nenn' ich einen Geheimen Medi- 
zinal-Rath ! ,? 

So deeply rooted with the Jews was 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 21 



the serious meaning of this life and what 
it offers or denies, at all times, that 
even to his hope of immortality he gave 
a this-world turn. His motto in this 
respect was the word : The memory of 
the just is for a blessing. His dead are 
not allowed to die for the memory. 
During the whole of the first year after 
death his ritual prescribes a prayer to be 
recited at the stated services by the 
mourners; and the anniversaries of 
deaths are loyally kept by children even 
if they live to a ripe old age. 

When, therefore, the religious life of 
Europe in the beginning of this century 
began to take a turn towards the life 
that now is and the amelioration of its 
conditions, the Jews were among the 
readiest to receive and cultivate the new 
spirit. They looked upon it as a con- 
firmation of the hope and the faith by 
which they have been sustained so long; 
and they are now found among the most 
active promoters of institutions de- 



22 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



signed to bring a little nearer the earthly 
paradise of which we have been dream- 
ing and singing and preaching for so 
long a time. 

Suppose we reach to it as near as this 
earth permits, will Judaism still survive, 
or be absorbed, voluntarily or otherwise, 
in the realization of its ideals ?■ Who 
can tell! This only is certain: its merits 
will not pass out of the memory of 
men. Can we Jews be satisfied with this 
consummation ? Why not ! What is 
good for individual man must be good 
for any conglomeration of men ; and 
what is better for the individual than 
the thought that the best fruit of his toil 
has nourished the best life of the world ? 
That such a crown will some time be 
placed on the brow of Judah is certain. 
The rest is in God's hand. 



II 



BUDDHISM 

By Professor T. \Y. Rhys'Dayids, Ph.D., LL.D. 
Oxford University. 

The future Buddha (the founder of 
the great system of religion and philos- 
ophy which we call Buddhism, and 
which he called the Dhamma or the 
Norm) was born in the sixth century 
B.C., in a noble family of Aryan descent, 
then settled at a place called Kapila-vat- 
thu, near what is now the boundary be- 
tween British India and Nepal. How, in 
his twenty-ninth year, he left his wife 
and only child and went out into the 
wilderness to become a homeless wan- 
derer; how he spent six years of pro- 
bationary studies into the mysteries of 
life; how, after much mental struggle, 
23 



24 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



he at last deemed himself to have dis- 
covered the solution of that mystery, 
and came forward as a teacher of the 
new doctrine; how he founded the Bud- 
dhist Order, that oldest and most influ- 
ential of all mendicant Orders ; and how 
he died peacefully forty-five years after- 
wards, is now well known to all. What 
we have to consider for a short space are 
the salient features of that philosophy 
of life which he set forth. 

When he began to think, it was not so 
much the fear of the gods that most 
filled with awe the minds of previous 
thinkers, as the fear of transmigration. 
The belief in the transmigration of 
souls, everywhere a part of primitive 
animism, had then acquired in the valley 
of the Ganges a power and a vitality 
much greater, much more influential, 
than it had at a similar stage in the re- 
ligious evolution of other ancient peo- 
ples. Very real, very constantly present 
to the minds of ordinary men, the idea 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 25 



filled the heart of the more thoughtful 
with a vague dread of the future. How 
was this transmigration to end ? Where, 
even after endless aeons of different lives 
in different bodies, could the soul look 
to find rest and peace at last ? Even a 
rebirth in heaven offered no security. 
For the gods and the angel-spirits, how- 
ever long the duration of their bliss, were 
doomed to fall, in their turn, from their 
high estate, and be reborn, according to 
their deeds, in other bodies. 

The most imaginative and poetic 
thought they had found a way of es- 
cape. They postulated a god, higher 
than all other gods, a personification of 
the mystic words of the ancient sacri- 
fice, Brahma, in whom all else that lived 
found its life. The logical conclusion 
was further drawn that all matter also 
was derived from Brahma, was Brahma. 
It is an error to trace back into pre- 
Buddhistic literature the notion of an 
absorption after death into this all-per- 



26 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



vading deity. It was enough for the 
thinkers of that day that the man who, 
in this life, realized the identity of his 
own soul with Brahma, would, when he 
died, go to the Brahma world, and thence 
never return, never be reborn. Thus, 
and thus only, was a firm resting-place 
to be found. The peace realized already 
in this life as a consequence of the sense of 
identity with God would never pass away. 

This theory, though common to vari- 
ous schools among the Brahmins, was 
confined to the few. It was taught, in 
poorest hermitages, as a mystery attain- 
able only by the select, the deepest 
thinkers, and even by them only by the 
grace of God. The mass of the people, 
when they thought about such things, 
were content, as we see from the funeral 
ceremonies, to look forward to a rebirth 
among the departed fathers in the world 
of the gods. The more religious thought 
to make this end more sure by careful 
observance of sacrificial rites and custom- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 27 



ary duties, or even, in extreme cases, by 
ascetic practices of various kinds. But 
just before the rise of Buddhism there 
had been, due greatly to favorable 
political and economic conditions, a 
remarkable increase in the popularity of 
all sorts of theosophic speculation ; and 
numerous teachers, not by any means 
always Brahmins, were posing as sophists, 
and as teachers of new things. 

Under two such teachers the future 
Buddha at first, immediately after his 
renunciation, studied. But, being dis- 
satisfied with their teaching, because it 
dealt more with the attainment of self- 
induced trance than with the ethical 
training he desired, he left them, to work 
out the question by and for himself. 
We cannot, therefore, be surprised to 
find, either, on the one hand, that the 
system he afterwards put forth bore evi- 
dent traces of the previous speculation, 
or, on the other, that it differed so 
greatly from that speculation in matters 



28 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



fundamental that it stamps him as the 
most original of all the leading religious 
teachers of the world. 

His system aims, like the previous 
ones, at salvation from transmigration. 
But he went behind transmigration. 
Why did they all dread this endless trans- 
migration unless renewed becomings 
meant also renewed sorrow ? The object 
to be aimed at must, therefore, be, above 
all and after all, the conquest of sorrow. 
But what is sorrow other than a subjec- 
tive feeling, an experience of one's own 
mind ? It is the separation from the 
loved and liked, the enforced union with 
the dreaded and disliked, the sense of 
wants unsatisfied, the sense of growing 
old, of decay and death. Now, all these 
are found wherever a separate ' individu- 
ality is found. And that is the reason 
why these constant becomings, these re- 
iterated rebirths (which always involve a 
separate individuality) are bound up with 
sorrow. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 29 



What brings all this about ? It is the 
unsatisfied longings at the moment of 
death that cause the rebirth. (Here the 
Indian thinker agrees, not only with his 
own predecessors, but also with Plato.) 
And these longings are, always and only, 
of three kinds — the lust of the flesh, the 
lust of life, and the love of this present 
world. To lay these, then, aside, to get 
rid of them, to become free from them — 
that would be the means to the end that 
all the religious thinkers of that day 
equally desired. 

But these ignoble longings are also 
things of the mind, the outcome of a 
man's own heart. The way, then, and 
the only way, to the conquest of them 
must be the conquest of one's own heart 
by the cultivation of the opposite dis- 
positions. No theosophical speculation, 
no views about one's soul, no hopes of 
a future life, no sacrifices, no penances, 
no external aid, can here avail. Nay, 
more than this — reliance on one or all of 



3o THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



these expedients only serves to turn the 
attention away from the only useful 
struggle, which is the struggle after self- 
conquest. The other, then so popular, 
methods are all worse than useless, they 
are actually pernicious. 

Now, self-conquest is not so easy. It 
must be carried on gradually, and accord- 
ing to a system, or the intellectual and 
ethical effort will be vain. The system 
put forward by the Buddha is well known 
as the Noble Eightfold Path (in Pali the 
Ariyo Atthangiko Maggo), that is to say: 



1. Right Views. 

2. Right Aspirations. 

3. Right Speech. 

4. Right Conduct. 



5. Right Livelihood. 

6. Right Effort. 

7. Right Mindfulness. 

8. Right Rapture. 



To have reached the end of this eight- 
fold path, to have made each of its eight 
divisions part and parcel of one's own 
nature, to have become all that it implies, 
is Arahatship or Nirvana. And the 
unshakable emancipation of heart which 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 31 



the Arahat then enjoys is described as 
the aim and the essence, the pith and 
the goal, of Buddhism. 1 

How tame it must have seemed, how 
empty, how pale, compared with the 
sacrificial rites, or the elaborate pen- 
ances, or the high-flown theosophies of 
the other religious teachers ! One can 
almost hear the sneer of the worldly- 
wise superior person of that day against 
the " platitudes of the Noble Eightfold 
Path;" one can almost feel the want 
for something more supernatural, more 
striking, that would at once be felt by 
the theosophists on hearing the simpli- 
city of this new doctrine. 

Whether one agrees with Buddhism 
or not, it is easy to see that these objec- 
tions, at least, are unfounded, exagger- 
ated. It may be a platitude that every 
man ought to have right views. It is 
not a platitude — most men would deny 



1 Majjhima, I., 205. 



32 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



it (and none more contemptuously than 
the superior person) — that every man 
ought to have right rapture. It was not 
only not a platitude, it was either a col- 
ossal blunder or a new truth of the very 
greatest weight, that salvation was to be 
sought in a state of mind, and in that 
only. Whether right or wrong, no one 
in the history of the world had hitherto 
put forward such a doctrine. And it 
certainly was not a simple matter that 
these eight, and just these eight, should 
have been held to be, in themselves, 
sufficient. Nor was it so simple even to 
grasp what the eight points, thus delib- 
erately chosen, actually did, and did not, 
include and mean ; still less what the 
Path, as a whole, leads up to and in- 
volves. Whatever else it was, early Bud- 
dhism was a most original, a most care- 
fully thought out and balanced system. 

This system is explained in the collec- 
tion of 1 86 Dialogues of the Buddha 
preserved to us in the Buddhist sacred 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 33 



books. The forty-third of these Dia- 
logues is devoted to the elucidation of 
what is meant by right views. It will be 
well, even only as a specimen, to set out 
in detail what this elucidation is as ex- 
plained in the ninth of the Dialogues of 
lesser length. And, first, the man of 
right views understands w T hat is evil and 
what is good, and the roots of each. 
And, again, he knows what are the four 
bases of bodily and mental life, and how 
these bases come into action and after- 
wards cease. The four, it may be men- 
tioned in passing, are food, contact 
(through the senses with the outside 
world), mental activity, and conscious- 
ness. There is no mention either of 
Brahma or of a soul or of intuitive 
ideas. As a consequence of this knowl- 
edge, the disciple gets entirely rid of 
sensuality and of ill will toward other 
beings, for he roots out of his heart the 
tendency toward the pride that arises 
from the belief in an ego ; and thus, 
3 



34 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



conquering delusion and gaining wisdom, 
he, even while yet in this present world, 
makes an end of sorrow. 

And, again, he knows what sorrow is, 
and its origin and its cessation — how it 
is bound up with the temporary individ- 
uality resulting from the evanescent 
union of the five groups of bodily and 
mental qualities (which go to make up 
each individual); how it results from 
craving, and ceases in Arahatship. 

And, again, he knows what old age 
and death mean, the getting aged and 
broken and white and wrinkled, the ap- 
proaching end of one's allotted span of 
life, the breaking up of one's bodily 
organs ; and the fall out of the class of 
beings to which one belongs, the disin- 
tegration of the five groups, the vanish- 
ing away from the sphere that one has 
filled — how both of them, death and old 
age, come from birth, and how both are 
overcome by Arahatship. 

And, again, he knows about birth and 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 35 



becoming, and about the grasping and 
thirst from which they come, and how 
all of these cease in Arahatship. 

And he knows about the sensations 
and about the ideas that follow thereon, 
how they arise and what they lead to ; 
and about name, and form, and con- 
sciousness, and mental predispositions; 
how all have their root in ignorance, and 
how ignorance can be analyzed ulti- 
mately into the four great evils — lust 
and becoming, delusion, and unwisdom. 
When he knows all this, then is his in- 
sight right, his views are straight, and 
endowed with an abiding trust in the 
truth ; he has entered into the realm of 
the good law. 

It may safely be said that no one, if 
asked to define right views, would give 
precisely this explanation. We have 
here unfolded to us what was then, and 
what is still, a new and original view of 
the mystery of life. The " soul" the- 
ory, which lies at the basis of all other 



36 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



religious systems, is conspicuous only by 
its absence. And there is no reference 
to any final causes. There is, indeed, a 
constant reference to causes and effects 
— very often of a kind that must seem 
strange, and at first sight almost unintel- 
ligible. But the main thesis is that life 
is the result of a temporary collocation 
of conditions that are always changing 
and are constantly tending to dissolve. 
To be able to trace the rise of any one 
state from the immediately preceding 
one is part of " right views.' ' To be 
able to explain the ultimate and neces- 
sary first cause, or causes, is no such 
part. It is implied (and is elsewhere ex- 
plicitly stated) that to have views about 
ultimate questions is a positive danger, 
inasmuch as it leads the man who holds 
them to rest on them without paying 
that strict attention to the immediate 
causes that it is so important for him to 
grasp. 

But the inevitable limits of space pre- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



elude any further comment on this state- 
ment of the right views that are the first 
thing necessary to the Noble Path. The 
right aspirations are explained in the 
twenty-ninth Dialogue. Lowest of all 
comes the aspiration after a sufficient 
livelihood, and the regard and respect of 
one's fellow-men. Better than this is 
the aspiration after rectitude of life. 
Better again than that is the aspiration 
after the rapture and the mental peace 
that arise from the insight of meditation. 
Still better is the aspiration after cer- 
tainty of knowledge. And best of all is 
the aspiration after that emancipation of 
heart that, first obtained as a temporary, 
momentary state, may by continued 
effort be made a permanent part of one's 
very being. That is the thing — this un- 
shakable emancipation of heart — which is 
the meaning, and the pith, and the end 
of the whole matter. 1 



1 Taken in abstract from Majjhima I., pp. 192-197, 
where the reference is to members of the Order. 



38 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



The interpretations of right speech 
and conduct and livelihood and effort are 
not so different from the ordinary mean- 
ing attached to similar expressions in 
the West. But they leave out every- 
thing not in harmony with the above. 
Right livelihood, it may be added, in- 
volves, among other things, that it 
brings hurt or danger to no living thing 
— a far-reaching ethical proposition that, 
if rigidly observed, would play sad havoc 
with many modes of livelihood highly 
honored in the present social conditions 
of the West. Right effort has, of 
course, nothing to do with getting on 
and making money. It is a never-flag- 
ging activity of the mind directed to 
ethical ends. And the important place 
it occupies in the " Path is in striking 
contradiction to the constant hints 
in popular literature at the apathy 
and the idle, dreamy sort of existence 
supposed to be characteristic of Bud- 
dhism. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 39 



Right mindfulness would be almost 
inevitably misunderstood by Western 
readers without the aid of commentary. 
It means a constant presence of mind in 
all the ordinary acts of life, never for 
one moment forgetful of the real facts of 
the subjective and objective phenomena 
that are ever passing before one's mental 
vision. This is set out in detail in many 
passages in the Sacred Books, and two 
of the Dialogues are devoted exclu- 
sively to it. There it is laid down that 
this constant mental alertness is the only 
method for purification, for getting be- 
yond grief and w r oe, for putting an end 
to sorrow and suffering, for the realiza- 
tion of Nirvana. 1 

Finally, right rapture is the peace of 
heart which follows on the sense of vic- 
tory gained ; and is realized by that 
steadfast concentration of mind in which 
the sense of " This is I " and " This is 



1 See, for instance, Majjhima I., 55-63% 



4Q THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



mine" has been finally got rid of and 
overcome. 1 

The system is pieced together like a 
puzzle. Each detail is only really mas- 
tered when its particular place in the 
system is kept before one's mind. An 
exposition confined to the necessarily 
narrow limits of such an article as the 
present one can attempt to deal with 
only the more fundamental and general 
features of the scheme. To any one 
who will study it, it is full of suggestion 
for practical application in the ethics of 
to-day. And its great value is the aid 
which it affords to the student of the 
comparative history of the development 
of human thought. 2 



1 Compare Anguttara III., 32, with Milinda 325, 
and Samyutta IV., 297, 350, and Dhamma Sangani 
11, 15, 24. 

2 Further information will be found in my just pub- 
lished " American Lectures," and in the authorities 
there referred to. 



Ill 



CONFUCIANISM 

By the Rev. Arthur H. Smith 
Author of "Chinese Characteristics" 

What is Confucianism ? By Confu- 
cianism we mean the essential teaching 
of those works which the Chinese reckon 
as classics. According to the narrowest 
enumeration, these are five in number — 
the Book of Changes, the Book of Odes, 
the Book of History, the Book of Rites, 
and the Spring and Autumn Annals. 
To these are also added the Conversations 
of Confucius, the Book of Filial Piety, 
the Works of Mencius, and Rituals and 
Commentaries, making a total of thirteen. 
The aggregate bulk of these works is 
probably somewhat less than that of our 
Old Testament, but if the Commentaries 
41 



42 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



are included the classics comprise in 
themselves a vast library. 

Theoretical Confucianism is to be got 
at by a distillation of these ancient books, 
and the writer of this paper wishes to 
disclaim any special fitness for the task 
of discussing a topic so comprehensive 
and of which he knows so little at first 
hand. 

At the Chicago Parliament of Reli- 
gions by far the longest essay presented 
was by the Hon. Pung Kwang Yu, Sec- 
retary to the Chinese Legation at Wash- 
ington. It extends to sixty-six pages, 
more than ten times the average length 
of the papers read there, and is an elab- 
orate discussion of many branches of 
our subject. It is of special interest, 
' ' as it is the first exposition ever given 
of Confucianism in English by a distin- 
guished and able man, himself a Con- 
fucianist. It is also the first attempt of 
such a man to estimate the relative value 
of all religions, especially of Christian- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



ity. In addition to this, it gives us the 
view which the Chinese Government 
holds of Christian missions to-day." 
The writer of that essay was asked not 
to make it " technical," but he found it 
impossible to make it otherwise. The 
writer of the present paper is requested 
to make it " popular," but this he feels 
more and more convinced to be imprac- 
ticable as he considers the matter longer. 
To most readers the Confucian classics 
are inaccessible, but the report of the 
Parliament of Religions has been sown 
broadcast over the whole earth. It 
seems, therefore, best to summarize, as 
briefly as may be, the essential parts of 
Mr. Pung's exposition, and those who 
wish for further elucidation have only to 
study his essay for themselves. Econ- 
omy of space forbids more than a mere 
abstract, but we shall endeavor to give 
the spirit of Mr. Pung's thoughts with- 
out at all following his order: 

While it is not true, as some claim, 



44 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



that China has no religion of her own, 
Confucianism is an ethical system, and is 
not a "religion' ' at all. Thousands of 
years ago the Chinese were obliged to 
give up religion as a basis of govern- 
ment, because when secular and spiritual 
matters were mixed, misfortunes and 
calamities befell the nation. Nothing 
could now induce the Chinese to consent 
that civil and religious affairs should inter- 
sect each other. 

There is a Spirit who rules this uni- 
verse of created things; who accom- 
plishes all his purposes without effort; 
whose presence cannot be perceived by 
the senses ; who dwells ever in an atmos- 
phere of serene majesty; who is the 
dispenser of all things, eternal and un- 
changeable. Before the creation of the 
universe he existed, and after the disso- 
lution of the universe he will remain the 
same. He is called "Ti," Supreme 
Ruler. " Ti " is synonymous with 
heaven, and there is only one such. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 45 



Heaven and earth constitute a dualism. 
The conjunction of their vital essences 
brings forth a third, the inscrutable part 
of which is called a spirit. Heaven 
unites its essences with those of the sun, 
moon, and stars, and spirits of heaven 
result. In a similar way the spirits of 
mountains, rivers, and seas are produced. 
When any of these spirits in some spe- 
cial way benefit creation, the national 
government canonizes them, and they 
then take their place by the side of 
heaven. 

Man is the product of heaven and 
earth, the union of the active and pas- 
sive principles, the conjunction of the 
soul and spirit, and the ethereal essence 
of the five elements. Being the con- 
necting link between unities and dual- 
isms, man is called the heart of heaven 
and earth. Spirit must not be con- 
founded with nature. Nature is an ac- 
tive element, matter is a passive element. 
To the interaction of the essences of 



46 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



the active and the passive principles the 
spirits of mountains, marshes, birds, in- 
sects, and of man are due. The spirit 
of man is in a more concentrated and 
better disciplined state than the spirits 
of the rest of the created things. For 
this reason the spirit of man, after death, 
though separated from the body, is able 
to retain its essential virtues, and does 
not become easily dissipated. This is 
the ghost or disembodied spirit. 

Spirits owe their existence to material 
substances, and as the substances may 
be useful or noxious, so spirits may be 
benevolent or malevolent. A man whose 
heart is good must have a good spirit. 
Spirits attract one another, and when 
good spirits attract one another, this is 
happiness. When bad spirits attract one 
another, this is misery. When the bad 
spirits produce misfortune and calami- 
ties, the wise legislator puts his reli- 
ance on music and ceremonies to adjust 
the social equilibrium. His aim is to 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 47 



restore the human heart to its pristine 
innocence by establishing a standard of 
goodness, and by pointing out a way of 
salvation to every creature. The right 
principles of action can be discovered 
only by studying the waxing of the ac- 
tive and passive elements as set forth in 
the Book of Changes, and surely cannot 
be understood by those who believe in 
what priests call the dispensations of 
Providence. Man is endowed with fac- 
ulties of the highest dignity, but if men 
lose this dignity in unlimited indulgence, 
even heaven cannot possibly do any- 
thing for them; but if, after experien- 
cing a sense of shame mingled with fear 
and trembling, they repent of their evil 
doings, they become men again with 
their humanity restored. This is a doc- 
trine maintained by all schools of Con- 
fucianists. 

Nature is grand and impartial in its 
actions. The rule of life should be con- 
formity to nature. To devote one's at- 



48 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



tention to the investigation of the laws 
of the spiritual world is unprofitable. 
Consequently Confucius made man his 
study, and would not discourse on won- 
ders, brute force, rebellion, and spirits. 
He says that the art of rendering effect- 
ive service to the people consists in keep- 
ing aloof from the spirits as well as in 
holding them in respect. " We have 
not yet performed our duties to men," 
he says; "how can we perform our 
duties to spirits ?" " We know not as 
yet about life ; how can we know about 
death ? " " He who has sinned against 
Heaven has no place to pray. " Under 
such circumstances any attempt to pre- 
sent before the people questions and 
problems that are incomprehensible and 
incapable of demonstration serves only 
to delude them by a crowd of misleading 
lights and to lead them to error and con- 
fusion. The wise rulers of antiquity 
laid down rules of propriety for the reg- 
ulation of the three " superior claims," 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 49 



to wit, that of the sovereign, the father, 
and the husband, as well as of the " five 
relations," namely, those of sovereign 
and subject, of parents and children, of 
husbands and wives, of elder and younger 
brothers, and of friends toward one an- 
other. 

All intelligent Chinese have for this 
reason been followers of Confucius, and 
Confucius really succeeded to the an- 
cient line of priests. To do reverence 
to spirits is to do nothing more than to 
refrain from giving them annoyance, and 
to do reverence to Heaven is nothing 
more than to refrain from giving it annoy- 
ance. On these points the ritual code is 
explicit, and there is, therefore, no de- 
mand for other religious works. What 
is properly called religion has never 
been considered as a desirable thing for 
the people to know and for the govern- 
ment to sanction. The reason is that 
every attempt to propagate religious 
doctrines in China has always given rise 

4 



5o THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



to the spreading of falsehoods and 
errors, and finally resulted in rebellions 
and dire calamity. It makes not the 
least difference whether the particular 
form of religion teaches truth or error, 
nor what the character of the propagan- 
dists may be. The final result is ever 
the same, except that a religion that 
teaches error precipitates a crisis more 
speedily, that is all. 

Both Taoists and Buddhists teach of 
future rewards and punishments. The 
purpose in doing so is laudable; it is 
the perpetuation of falsehood by clinging 
to errors that deserves condemnation. 
Confucianists do not accept such doc- 
trines, though they make no attempt to 
suppress them. Heaven and hell are 
found in this life, without troubling the 
Buddhist Pluto and the Christ of the 
Christians to judge the dead after death, 
and reward every man according to his 
deserts. As a rule, men given to specu- 
lations on the world of spirits are for- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 51 



getful of the duties of this life, and while 
employed by officials on occasions of 
public worship, they are at the same time 
despised by the Confucianists as the 
dregs of the people. As Buddhism says 
nothing of the regulation of the family, 
the government of the State, and the 
pacification of the world, there can be 
no conflict between Buddhism and the 
affairs of state. 

There are many resemblances between 
the teachings of Christ and those of 
Confucianists, but the New Testament is 
very meagre on questions respecting the 
human faculties and the principles of 
morality, while the Confucian writers are 
very full. There is a Trinity in Taoism, 
a Trinity in Buddhism, and a Trinity in 
Christianity. If, by living according to 
the dictates of nature and by suppress- 
ing the desires of the flesh, one arrives 
at perfect agreement with nature, and 
obtains a complete mastery over desires, 
such a one Buddhists call a Buddha, 



52 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



Taoists a genius, and Christians a child 
of God. It is idle for thinkers to attack 
one another, for all men cannot possibly 
arrive at the same opinion on any sub- 
ject. The progress of Christianity does 
not concern Confucianists in the least. 

Thus far the Hon. Pung Kwang Yu. 
To this ought to be appended a quota- 
tion from a speech of Li Hung Chang in 
New York last autumn, in which he said 
to a delegation representing missionary 
interests: " In a philosophical point of 
view, as far as I have been able to appre- 
ciate, Christianity does not differ much 
from Confucianism, as the Golden Rule 
is expressed in a positive form in one, 
w T hile it is expressed in the negative form 
in the other. It is at present enough to 
conclude that there exists not much 
difference between the wise sayings of 
the two greatest teachers, on the foun- 
dations of which the whole structure of 
the two systems of morality is built." 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 53 



There are six essential elements of 
Confucianism, five of which, so far as we 
know, differentiate it from any other 
system of non-Christian thought. Of 
these, the first is its doctrine of the direct 
responsibility of the sovereign to Heaven, 
Slicing Ti, or God. This is abundantly 
illustrated in the classical writings, and 
it is a factor of the government of the 
present day as really as in times past. 
From this source originates the whole 
complex theory of Chinese responsibility, 
which plays so large a part in the con- 
duct of all Chinese affairs, private as 
well as public. Only the Emperor wor- 
ships Shang Ti, although the people do 
reverence to " heaven and earth," with 
very little conception of what it is that 
they worship. 

The second element is the startling 
theory that the people are of more impor- 
tance than the sovereign. The latter 
reigns by the decree of Heaven. When 
he loses Heaven's decree, he has no 



54 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



longer the right to rule. The Chinese 
theory of government has been com- 
pendiously described as despotism tem- 
pered by the right of rebellion — a right 
constantly exercised in every period of 
Chinese history. This feature of Chi- 
nese rule makes it the most unique com- 
bination of absolute monarchy and 
" triumphant democracy " that the world 
has ever seen. 

The third element is the clear recogni- 
tion of the various social relations, as 
already described. To a Chinese these 
five relations exhaust the universe, just 
as a Christian considers the Ten Com- 
mandments to be co-extensive with hu- 
man activity. As a matter of fact, it is 
easy to show that many " relations/' 
such as those between capital and labor, 
for example, find no recognition at all. 

The fourth element is the lofty moral 
system of Confucianism, The five con- 
stant virtues are benevolence, righteous- 
ness, propriety, knowledge, and good 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 55 



faith. The virtues are far oftener talked 
of in China than the precepts of the 
New Testament in Christian lands. They 
form a standard which is brought to the 
attention of all Chinese continuously. 
The civil service examinations, a slow 
growth of many ages, have unified the 
Chinese mind as the mind of no other 
people was ever unified, unless the jews 
form an exception. The Chinese habit 
of using sententious classical mottoes for 
the adornment of their door-posts, mot- 
toes written afresh at every New Year 
season, keeps the Confucian maxims 
always before the eye of the whole Chi- 
nese race. They are employed with 
varied iteration in all primary text- 
books, and the classics themselves form 
the sole and sufficient staple of all Chi- 
nese learning. It is an integral part of 
the theory that only the wise and the 
able should rule. The object of the 
elaborate civil service examinations is to 
determine who the wise and the able are. 



56 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



The fifth element is the presentation of 
an ideal or princely man as the model on 
which every Confucianist should form 
his character. The influence of this 
ideal upon the unnumbered millions of 
Chinese Confucianists must have been 
measureless. Confucius enounced the 
Golden Rule in a negative form, but he 
affirms in the same connection that he 
himself had not attained to it. This 
places before all followers of the sage the 
ambition to live up to the high level 
which the master himself had not reached. 
Self-examination is inculcated by the 
precepts and by the example of the 
greatest rulers and wise men of antiquity. 
No nation, no race, was ever better out- 
fitted with admirable moral precepts 
than the Chinese. 

The last element of the six, only less 
distinctly Chinese than the others, is 
filial piety. This includes not only that 
meaning naturally suggested to Orien- 
tals, but a great deal more, and in es- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 57 



pecial the worship of ancestors, which is 
the real religion of the Chinese people. 
It is perhaps the most potent among 
several causes which have perpetuated 
the Chinese race as a unit through all the 
millenniums of its vast history. It is 
itself an illustration of the saying of an 
emperor of a famous dynasty more than 
a thousand years ago, that Confucianism 
is adapted to the Chinese people as water 
to the fish. 

To those who believe that all truth is 
in its origin one, there need be no hesi- 
tation in admitting that the sages who 
uttered the principles underlying the 
Confucian tenets were in a sense divinely 
illuminated. Theirs was not the inspi- 
ration which we find in the Christian 
Scriptures, but they saw clearly pro- 
found, far-reaching, and eternal truths. 

Thus far we have spoken only of theo- 
retical Confucianism. It is of impor- 
tance to remember that Confucius was in 



58 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



no sense the founder of the system 
which goes by his name. He himself 
declared that he was not an originator, 
but a transmitter. It was his glory to 
have caught all the rays of light coming 
from the dim past, and to combine them 
into one torch which has ever since lit up 
the Chinese path. But there was a 
Confucianism before Confucius; Taoism, 
or Rationalism, which has been its sole 
native rival, has to some extent modified 
Confucianism by interaction. Taoism 
taught the art of reducing nature by pro- 
cesses analogous to European alchemy, 
and the possibility of an elixir of life, thus 
attaining immortality. Yet this must 
always be the reward of the few. Bud- 
dhism, invited to China by an emperor 
more than six hundred years after the 
birth of Confucius, attempted to fill the 
void in the human heart which longs for 
salvation and for a saviour. The success 
of this misty and chameleon faith among 
the millions of hard-headed, practical 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 59 



Chinese has been phenomenal. For 
ages Confucianism was its bitter foe, but 
as a matter of fact these three discord- 
ant contradictories have been inter- 
blended in a way perhaps elsewhere 
unexampled on this earth. Temples are 
found all over the empire in which the 
founders of the " three religions 99 stand 
side by side, and by perpetual repercus- 
sion for several hundred years the maxim 
that the three doctrines are one has come 
to be almost as much believed as the 
doctrines themselves. The same cir- 
cumstance has resulted in such a com- 
plex of faith, in three sets of tenets 
which are, in Hamiltonian phrase, " in- 
compossible," as to confound those Oc- 
cidental statisticians who insist upon 
supposing that every man must either 
believe something or believe something 
else ; whereas a Chinese believes, or sup- 
poses that he believes, something and 
something else. 



6o THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



The reader who has followed the fore 
going abstract of the most recent expo- 
sition of Confucian doctrine is prepared 
to judge in how many essential particu- 
lars it fails to give light. Its Shang Ti 
is remote and out of relation with man- 
kind. He is not a Father, and the peo- 
ple are not allowed to worship him. 
Prayer is a ceremony by which evils are 
avoided and blessings insured. Poly- 
theism is not only sanctioned, but neces- 
sitated. There is no explanation of sin 
and no remedy for it. For those to 
whom the ideal is inaccessible there is 
no salvation. Mere example is elevated 
into a force sufficient to keep the race on 
the right path. There is no explanation 
of its failure to do so, and no remedy for 
the failure. Ancestral worship is equiv- 
alent to the enlargement of the Chinese 
Pantheon to include all dead parents. 
This rite takes precedence of all others, 
and leads to the indefinite and reckless 
propagation of millions of persons for 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 61 



whose support there is no adequate pro- 
vision. To this end polygamy, with all 
its immeasurable woes, is a practical 
necessity. Confucianism subordinates 
the children to the parents as long as the 
parents live, and prevents the normal 
development of those thus conditioned. 
The highest result of an ideal Confucian 
life is a cold formalism, and its inevita- 
ble tendency is to foster exaggerated 
self-esteem. It has resulted in the prac- 
tical deification of its leading sages, but 
no one has any hope of reproducing 
their example in practice. It is a cur- 
rent saying that there are but two ideal 
men — one is dead, the other not yet 
born ! This aphorism aptly voices the 
hopelessness of Confucianism. 

Judging from a background of twenty- 
five years' acquaintance with China, one 
may pass through four distinct stages in 
his estimate of Confucianism. Coming 
to it from the atmosphere of a study of 



62 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



comparative religion, he is prepared to 
find it the best system ever devised by 
the mind of man for solving the prob- 
lems of the race. He reveres the sages, 
and is anxious to conserve all that is 
good in their teaching. After some 
years of experience he becomes alive 
to the cavernous depths of sorrow and 
misery for which Confucianism has no 
help and no sympathy. The hollowness 
of its high-sounding but empty verbiage 
grates upon the ear, and he is weary of 
suspicion and insincerity masquerading 
in the garments of antiquity. 

By this time a renewed observation of 
the actual state of the Occidental world 
serves to restore the balance of judg- 
ment. He there beholds many evils 
which are not forced to the front in 
China, and he recognizes the fact that 
there is no such unity of thought in any 
Western land in regard to ideals as there 
is in China. After a prolonged contem- 
plation of the restless world at large, he 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 63 



returns to China full of generous hope- 
fulness that his former opinions may 
have been overdrawn. But a reexam- 
ination of all the phenomena which he 
sees, a reperusal of the data upon which 
previous judgments w r ere formed, inevi- 
tably lead to a more emphatic reaffirma- 
tion of the proposition that Confucianism 
is a spent force. Its golden age is in the 
past, while the outlook of every Chris- 
tian land is toward the morning dawn of 
a bright future. After listening to the 
varied eloquence of the speakers at the 
Parliament of Religions, one is com- 
pelled to ask, What, after all, is the es- 
sential difference between the Orient and 
the Occident ? We believe it to be this: 
In the former, when things are as bad as 
they can be, they get worse ; in the Occi- 
dent they slowly tend to an improve- 
ment. Confucianism has within it no 
further energy for the evolution of good, 
but it is a powerful conserving influence. 
China is in a far sounder condition mor- 



64 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



ally than was the Roman Empire in the 
time of Christ. We believe that China 
is sounder morally than Mohammedan 
Turkey, or than polyglot, metaphysical 
India. But, great as has been its work, 
Confucianism is inert. It is dead. 
Sooner or later it must give way to some- 
thing stronger, wiser, and better. 



IV 



MOHAMMEDANISM 

By the Rev. George Washburn, D.D. 
President of Robert College, Constantinople 

Mohammedanism is a positive religion 
based upon the Koran and the life and 
teaching of Mohammed. The Koran is 
believed to be literally the word of God, 
communicated directly to the Prophet, ^ 
and written at his dictation. It is in- 
spired not only verbally but in punctu2- ' 
tion, and although the original writings 
were destroyed, there is every reason to 
believe that we have it in essentially th# 
same form in which Mohammed left it. 
All Moslems accept it and use it, believ- 
ing that the divine words have a mystic 
power whether they are understood or 
5 



66 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



I not. If translated, it is no longer the 
word of God. 

But it is the life and teaching of the 
Prophet as set forth by the Imams, 
rather than the Koran, which is the prac- 
tical basis of Mohammedanism, and con- 
trols the faith and life of the people. 
Every effort was made during the life- 
time of those who personally knew the 
Prophet to collect and record all the in- 
cidents of his life and all his sayings. 
These were carefully sifted, and formed 
. the basis of several lives of the Prophet, 
and of collections of traditions in regard 
to him, graded, according to the weight 
of testimony, into several classes. The 
division of his followers into Sunnis and 
^Shiahs, and of these into a multitude of 
contending sects, grew out of the ques- 
tion of the succession to the Caliphat, 
and of the interpretation of these tradi- 
tions. Most of the Sunnis are followers 
of the Imam Hanifa, who was born at 
Kufa, and lived from 80 to 150 A.H. He 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 67 



was the great theologian of Islam. He 
based his teaching upon the Koran, the 
traditions of the sayings and acts of 
the Prophet, the sayings and acts of the 
earlier Caliphs, and logical deductions 
from all these. It is a most elaborate 
system of philosophy, theology, and law ? 
and is the chief study of the Ulema to 
this day. There are rival systems by 
the Imams Shafei, Malek, and Hanbal, 
but they have few followers. It is impos- 
sible to enter here upon any discussion 
of these systems or even an enumera- 
tion of the hundreds of Mohammedan 
sects, but it is necessary to remember 
that, whatever one may think of the 
Koran, it plays about the same part in 
Islam as that of the Old Testament in 
modern Judaism. It is the sacred book, 
but not the source of either the beliefs 
or the morals, of the people. 

In deciding what is essential to a reli- 
gion it is always desirable to have the tes- 
timony of some one who professes it, 



68 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



and is an authority recognized by his 
co-religionists. In this case we have an 
official letter, written ten years ago, by 
the Sheik-ul-Islam, the highest author- 
ity possible, to a German gentleman who 
had written to him for information as to 
how he could become a Moslem. I 
quote all the essential parts of this state- 
ment : 

The religion of Islam has for its basis faith in 
the unity of God and the mission of the Prophet. 
If you declare that there is one God and that 
Mohammed is his prophet, you are a Mussulman 
and our brother, for all true believers are 
brethren. 

This is a summary definition of faith. Now 
let us enter into its development. Man, who is 
superior to the other animals by his intelligence, 
has been created out of nothing to adore his 
Creator. This adoration consists in honoring 
the commands of God and in sympathizing with 
his creatures. 

To enlighten men God has sent the 
prophets and the holy Koran. The great- 
est of all the prophets was Mohammed. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 69 



All the prophets threaten their followers with 
a Day of Judgment. So it is necessary to believe 
that the dead will rise, that they will appear be- 
fore the tribunal of God to give an account, that 
the elect will be sent to paradise and the damned 
to hell. All the acts of soldiers in a holy war 
will be considered as prayer, and the martyrs 
will go to paradise without any examination 
into their lives. 

Moreover, it is necessary to accept as an -article ^ 
of faith that God is the author of both good and 
evil. Consequently the believer ought to have 
faith in God, in his angels, in his books, in his 
prophets, in the last judgment, and to attribute 
both good and evil to the Divine Will. He who 
professes these verities is a true believer, but to 
be a perfect believer it is necessary to pray to 
God and to avoid falling into such sins as assas- 
sination, robbery, adultery, and sodomy. 

In addition to the profession of faith a good 
Moslem ought to pray five times a day, to give 
away each year one-fortieth part of his goods, 
to fast during the month of Ramazan, and at 
least once in his life to make the pilgrimage to 
Mecca. 

If a believer does not conform to these orders 
of God, and does not avoid what He forbids, he 
does not for this become an unbeliever. He will 



7o THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



be considered as a sinner, that is to say, as a be- 
liever who has gone astray, and merits, in another 
world, a provisional punishment. He is at the 
disposition of God, who will pardon him or con- 
demn him to pass a certain period in hell, pro- 
portioned to his guilt. 

But faith annuls all sin. He who accepts 
Islamism becomes as innocent as a new-born 
babe, and is responsible only for the sins com- 
mitted after his conversion. A sinner who re- 
pents, and who solicits in person the remission 
of his sins, obtains the divine pardon. The only 
exception is when we have violated the rights of 
Our neighbor ; for the servant of God who can- 
not obtain justice in this world will demand it 
at the last judgment, and God will accord it. 
To avoid this responsibility we must obtain an ac- 
quittance from the person wronged before we die. 

There are no priests, no clergy, no 
mediators between God and man, in the 
faith of Islam. Only the religious cere- 
monies are subordinate to the will of the 
Caliph and Sultan, and " obedience to 
his orders is one of the most important 
of religious duties.' \ 

One of the things to which every Moslem 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



7i 



ought to be very attentive is integrity of char- 
acter. Such vices as pride, presumption, ego- 
tism, and severity do not befit a Moslem. To 
revere the great and to compassionate the small 
are precepts of Islam. 

Any one who will compare this plain 
official statement with the glowing pages 
of Syed Ameer Aali's " Life and Teach- 
ing of Mohammed" will realize how 
difficult it is for a student only of books 
to form a correct conception of what 
Mohammedanism really is ; for no one 
doubts that Ameer Aali's book -is per- 
fectly honest, and that he conceives it m 
possible to realize his conception of 
Islam ; but, unfortunately, he represents 
only a small sect, and reaches his conclu- 
sions, by ignoring most of what is re- 
corded of the Prophet in the lives and 
traditions which other Mohammedans 
receive. He himself recognizes the fact 
that existing Mohammedanism does not 
at all resemble his ideal, either in theory 
or practice (page 284). 



72 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



That Mohammed was an inspired 
prophet of God all his followers agree, 
though some deny that there was any- 
thing supernatural in his inspiration and 
arbitrarily reject most of the traditions. 
Nearly all, however, go to the other ex- 
treme — make him the first created spirit 
and his life miraculous from the dawn of 
creation to the present day. The ques- 
tion what his life and character really 
were is a study by itself, and we cannot 
enter upon it here. The life and char- 
acter which determine the nature of 
Mohammedanism are those which appear 
in the traditions and in the earlier biog- 
raphies. While there is a bright side 
to them and they exhibit many noble 
qualities, they are not conformed to 
Christian ideas of morality, and there 
are chapters, even in the Koran, refer- 
, ring to acts which could be excused to 
his own people only by a revelation from 
God. But there is nothing anywhere to 
justify the conclusion that Mohammed 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 73 



himself doubted the reality of his mis- 
sion as a prophet called to preach the 
being and unity of God. That he be- 
lieved this truth himself, that he was 
even ready to die for it, and that he held 
it to the end, I have no doubt. And 
this is the central thought of Mohammed- 
anism — the one uppermost in the minds 
of all Moslems — that there is one Eter- 
nal, Almighty, Omnipresent, Personal 
God, who is the special friend and pro- 
tector of all true believers. God is in 
all their thoughts. He is everywhere 
and in everything. Whatever is done, 
he does it. Whatever is known, he 
knows it. There is no limit to his wis- 
dom or power. There is no perfection 
which he does not possess. He has 
ninety-nine names, each representing 
some divine attribute, but the one most 
often used is the All-Merciful. To 
those who confess his being and unity 
and recognize Mohammed as his prophet, 
he is always long-suffering and merciful. 



74 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



To all others he is a consuming fire from 
which there is no possible escape in this 
world or the next. He is their implaca- 
ble enemy. 

The character of any religion may be 
. tested by its conception of God and its 
teaching as to the nature of man. In 
* this second respect also, Mohammedan- 
ism seems, at first sight, to be at one 
with Christianity. It teaches that man 
is a sinner, weak, corrupt, and absolutely 
dependent upon God's mercy for salva- 
tion. With these two great truths the 
Mohammedan mystic sometimes rises to 
the highest and most spiritual concep- 
tions of God, and aspires to a life swal- 
lowed up in him. But if we examine 
these doctrines more closely, we find 
that the orthodox and common belief, 
based upon the life and traditions of the 
Prophet, gives us a very different concep- 
tion of both God and man from that 
found in the New Testament. The GocJ 
of Mohammedanism is an ideal Oriental 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



75 



despot magnified to infinity. The con- 
ception is not wanting in grandeur. All 
that Arabic poetry could do to exalt 
him has been done. Every perfection 
which it could conceive was attributed to 
him. Still he is an absolute Oriental 
monarch — all-powerful, all-wise, all-mer- 
ciful towards his loyal subjects^ but 
wreaking vengeance on all his adversa- 
ries — above all law, and infinitely re- 
moved from even the highest of his offi- 
cials. Whatever he does or commands 
is right because he wills it. What he 
hates is not sin, but rebellion. He may 
or may not punish other offences, for he 
is all-merciful, but to deny his unity or 
his prophet is unpardonable. For this 
there is nothing but eternal fire. As 
there is no right or wrong except as he 
wills it, there is no true sense in which 
he can be called holy. Nor can it be 
said that he loves righteousness. What 
he loves is submission to his will, and 
this is the highest virtue known to Rio- 



76 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



hammedanism. It is what gives it its 
name — Islam, which means submission. 
Between God and man there is no kin- 
snip, nothing in common. He is not 
our Father and we are not his children. 
To use this expression as Christians do 
is blasphemy. If we are true believers, 
we are his sheep ; if not, we are wolves. 
Consequently the idea of the incarnation 
of God in Jesus Christ is not only blas- 
phemous, but absurd and incomprehen- 
sible. Whatever the Christian knows of 
God through the Incarnation is unknown 
to the Moslem. 

The Mohammedan conception of the 
nature of man is fatalistic. It does not 
push fatalism to its logical conclusion and 
deny the reality of sin. The Prophet 
speaks of himself as a sinner depend- 
ent on divine mercy, although this is 
explained away by his followers as only 
a figure of speech. But while sin, pun- 
ishment, and the pains of hell occupy a 
large place in the Koran and the tradi- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIOXS 



tions, while so much is said of the need 
of divine mercy, still the Moslem psy- 
chology is fatalistic, and the people look 
upon sin rather as a misfortune than a 
crime. The Moslem makes no distinc- 
tion between the sensibilities and the 
will, and does not admrt that he can re- 
sist or control his desires. He .may 
avoid temptation, but he cannot resist it. 
God has made him weak, and hung his | 
fate upon his neck. What can he do ? 
If God has made him a Christian, Jew, 
or idolater, he will go to hell forever, 
however he may live in this world. This 
is his fate. If he is a Moslem, he will 
ultimately go to paradise, whatever his 
character. It is God's will. For one 
born a Moslem there is no place for con- 
version or regeneration. Man has no 
will to be changed. There is no such 
thing as an eternal principle of right. 
There is only the arbitrary will of God. 
Sin is disregard of God's law. He may 
punish it or not as he pleases. The idea 



78 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



that sin can corrupt and destroy the 
soul of a Moslem, or that character is 
fixed forever by our own act, is absurd. 
It is not salvation from sin that a man 
needs, but salvation from punishment. 
This depends on the will of God. As 
there is no necessity for regeneration, so 
there is none for an atonement, though 
the Moslem makes much of the advocacy 
of the Prophet. Christ was a great 
prophet, but in no sense the Saviour or 
Redeemer of the world. He did not die 
for the world, for the very good reason 
that he did not die at all, but was taken 
up to heaven, while one like him was 
crucified. When a Moslem feels the 
burden of sin, he feels it as a debt, and 
asks himself what good work he can do 
to offset it, or comforts himself with the 
thought that the Great King is too rich 
and merciful to press a poor, weak, but 
loyal subject for payment. 

These brief statements are sufficient 
to show that the Moslem conception of 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



man is the natural complement of its 
conception of God. While not abso- 
lutely fatalistic, it regards sin as a natu- 
ral weakness, and character as a matter 
of fate rather than the effect of the 
choice of good or evil. Taken together, 
these two conceptions embody what is 
essential in the orthodox faith of Islam, 
and they are doctrines easy to be propa- 
gated, especially when championed by 
a conquering race. It does not require 
much mental effort to comprehend 
them, and their acceptance does not ne- 
cessitate any change of character; while, 
at the same time, everything is promised 
to the convert which the soul demands 
— perfect immunity for all past sin, the 
special favor and protection of an om- 
nipotent God and whatever man can de- 
sire in another world, while his instinct 
for worship is satisfied by an elaborate 
ceremonial code. 

The ethical code of Islam is essentially 
that of the Old Testament, modified in 



8o THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



some respects by the traditions of the 
life of the Prophet and by the philoso- 
phy of Hanifa and the other Imams. 
In practice it is also modified by the 
Moslem conception of the nature oi man 
and by the fact that the ideal man of 
Islam is Mohammed. Whatever he is 
supposed to have done or approved is 
worthy of imitation. It is also peculiar 
in that it makes a broad distinction be- 
tween the duties which Moslems owe to 
each other and those which they owe 
to unbelievers. As the Moslem rejects 
the fatherhood of God, so he denies the 
brotherhood of man. All true believers 
are brethren ; all others are dogs. If 
they quietly submit to Moslem rule, pay 
tribute, make themselves useful, and are 
good dogs, they are to be tolerated and 
treated with kindness; otherwise the 
men are to be killed and the women and 
children sold as slaves (Koran, Sura 
IX.). This distinction is elaborated in 
the works of Hanifa, which are the prin- 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 81 



cipal study of the Softas. There are, of 
course, many Moslems, like Ameer Aali, 
whose relations with Christians are such 
that they have no sympathy with this 
orthodox view. 

The working of this principle has been 
illustrated by the plunder and massacre 
of the Armenians during the past two 
years in Turkey. It has been done in 
the name of the Prophet, with the sanc- 
tion of the Caliph, by the hands of Mos- 
lems, who have gone from the mosque to 
the massacre believing that they were 
doing God's will. At the same time a 
large number of Turks have condemned 
the massacres, and have done all that 
they could to defend the lives of the 
Armenians. Tens of thousands of Ar- 
menian lives have been saved in this 
way, and some distinguished Ulema 
have declared that neither the massacres 
nor the forced conversions could be jus- 
tified. This difference does not arise 
from any doubt as to the principle in- 
6 



82 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



volved, but from a question of fact. If 
the whole Armenian nation is to be con- 
sidered in a state of rebellion against the 
Caliph, then all that has been done has 
been strictly in accord with the teaching 
of Jslam. I have met no Turk who 
held any other opinion. But if only a 
few individuals have been in rebellion, 
then there is no justification for the 
plunder and slaughter of thousands of 
innocent and submissive people, even if 
they were unbelievers. It is on this 
ground that they have, in many cases, 
been protected by pious Moslems. 

The specific duties which a perfect 
Mussulman owes to God and his breth- 
ren, and the special sins which he is to 
avoid, are stated in the letter of the 
Sheik-ul-Islam. The duties are prayer, 
alms, fasting, pilgrimage, and, in case of 
need, holy war; in general to obey the 
commands of God and compassionate 
his creatures, to revere the great and pity 
the weak. He should avoid such sins as 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS S3 



assassination, robbery, adultery, sodomy, 
pride, presumption, egotism, and harsh- 
ness. The Koran says: " God promises 
his mercy and a brilliant recompense to 
those who add good works to their 
faith/' Omer Nessefi says: It is an 
indispensable obligation for every Mos- 
lem to practise virtue and avoid vice, 
i.e., all that is contrary to religion, law, 
•humanity, good manners, and the duties 
of society. He ought especially to guard 
against deception, lying, slander, and 
abuse of his neighbor. 99 In practice 
there are certainly many Moslems who 
try to observe these precepts, who fear 
God, and in their dealings with men, 
even with unbelievers, are honest, truth- 
ful, and benevolent, who are temperate 
in the gratification of their desires, and 
cultivate a self-denying spirit, of whose 
sincere desire to do right there can be no 
doubt. But the average Moslem, within 
my observation, is much more concerned 
with the formal than the spiritual side of 



84 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



his religion. This is also the testimony 
of Ameer Aali. He says, " The Mos- 
lems of the present day have made 
themselves the slaves of opportunism 
and outward observance. 99 

Volumes have been written on points 
in Mohammedanism which I have not 
touched, but which undoubtedly make 
up the greater part of the life and 
thought of the majority of Moslems. 
The speculative theology and philosophy 
of Mohammedanism, though now some- 
what antiquated in relation to modern 
thought, covers as wide a field as that of 
Thomas Aquinas, and is the basis of the 
teaching in the schools. The common 
people get their religious education from 
the lives and traditions of the Prophet, 
which are full of curious and fantastic 
legends of the times of the earlier proph- 
ets as well as of the delights of para- 
dise and the sufferings of hell. The 
dervishes and their secret teaching are a 
study by themselves. Then there are 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 85 



great moral questions, such as slavery, 
polygamy, divorce, and holy war, which 
might be discussed at length. But my 
object has been to present only such 
points as all orthodox Moslems regard 
as essential to their faith, without con- 
troversy or any more of comment and 
explanation than seemed necessary to a 
right understanding of them. 



V 



BRAHMANISM 

By Charles R/Lanman 
Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University- 
It is a cheering sign of the times that 
we are beginning to quit prejudice and 
are learning to look outward. We adopt 
a ballot-law from Australia simply be- 
cause it makes for political righteous- 
ness; we waste no time to inquire, like 
Nathanael, " Can there any good thing 
come out of" that whilome limbo of 
deported convicts ? And, now, at last, 
in religion, as well as in politics, we are 
ready to go to the ends of the earth, if 
so be we may find God's light and truth, 
and to take it at the hands of men whom 
we once scrupled not to call benighted 
heathen. " God, who at sundry times 
86 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



and in divers manners spake in time past 
unto the fathers by the prophets " — such 
is the splendid exordium of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews. To the Hebrews, 
" prophets" meant naught else than 
Hebrew prophets — small wonder. But 
to St. Paul — what would the meaning 
be to him, if we could question him 
about it to-day ? He surely would be 
the last to limit it to the saints and sages 
of a*' chosen people. " Nay, rather, he 
would rejoice to find the accents of the 
Holy Ghost in Greece or even in India. 

Brahmanism is exclusive rather than 
proselyting. It is not a world-religion ; 
but we may not on that account deny 
that it has a message for the world. 
That message may consist on the one 
hand in truths which its doctrines in- 
clude; or also, on the other, in lessons 
and warnings which modern thinkers of 
wider scope than any Hindu, may read 
from its long and often sad history. 

The term Brahmanism is vague, and 



88 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



forces us, even at the outset, to some 
prefatory definition. The Vedas are the 
sacred books of the Hindus, the oldest 
recorded documents of that branch of 
the human race to which we Anglo-Sax- 
ons belong. For our present purposes, 
the Vedas may be divided into three 
great strata: the Hymns, the Brahmanas, 
and the Upanishads. The Hymns (often 
called Veda in a narrower sense) are 
the oldest, and in them is reflected the 
simple nature-religion of a sturdy, life- 
loving people, the early Aryan Hindus. 
To them, the wind, the storm, the sun, 
the fire, the waters — each was the mani- 
festation of a divine personality, of a 
god whose anger was to be appeased and 
whose favor was to be sought. The 
worship is on a give-and-take basis. The 
gods accept offerings of rice and butter, 
and bestow in return rain and food, chil- 
dren and cattle. Of lofty spiritual aspi- 
ration there is little in the Hymns of the 
old Vedic religion. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 89 



The simple rites of the fathers fell 
into the hands of a caste of priests 
whose interest it was to elaborate the 
rites into a system so complex that only 
they, the professional sacrificers, could 
perform them. The ancient nature- 
worship was transformed into a rigid, 
soul-deadening ritualism which is per- 
haps without a parallel. The sacrifice 
was apotheosized and invested with a 
supernal, a god-compelling power. This 
second great phase in the evolution of 
religions in India we name Brahmanism 
proper; the literature in which it is re- 
flected we call the Brahmanas, and they 
seem to represent Indian thought at 
its lowest ebb. With it came a pro- 
found transformation of the Indian char- 
acter. The life-loving strenuousness 
of the olden time has given place to 
pessimistic quietism. The belief in the 
transmigration of souls has become an 
established conviction, not of the learned 
only, but of the lowest and meanest. 



go THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



We may liken the time to the hour 
of sultry stillness that precedes the 
storm. 

For at this juncture, probably in the 
sixth century B.C., a new era of religious 
commotion began. Dreamers and mys- 
tics, reformers and saviours, seem to have 
arisen on all sides in Gangesland, full of 
new teachings, some lofty, some paltry, 
with which they were to reclaim men 
from the slough in which they were 
mired. Gotama Buddha was one of these 
teachers, the greatest and noblest per- 
sonality of all Indian history. Another 
was Nigantha Nataputta, the founder, 
or rather the reformer, of Jainism. Still 
others of lesser note are named in the 
Buddhist Scriptures as propounders of 
various heresies. But next to Gotama, 
doubtless the greatest teachers of this 
time were the Brahman theosophists, men 
like Shandilya and Yajnavalkya, the au- 
thors, of the doctrines of the Upani- 
shads. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 91 



The Upanishads 1 teach the absolute 
identity of man and God, of the individ- 
ual soul and the Supreme Spirit, and de- 
clare that only by recognition of its true 
nature can the soul be released from 
its attachment to the world-illusion, and 
from the consequent round of trans- 
migrations. Ignorance is the root of all 
sin and evil. Salvation is by knowledge. 
And accordingly the Upanishads on 
the one hand form what the Hindus 
call the "Knowledge division* ' of the 
Vedas, as opposed to the old Hymns 
and Brahmanas on the other hand, 
which they call the " Work-division." 
The relation is like that of the New Tes- 
tament to the Old — only that in India 
the antithesis is not between works and 
faith, but between works and knowl- 
edge. Since the Upanishads are held to 

1 The best work extant in any modern language of 
Europe upon the Upanishads is Paul Deussen's trans- 
lation of them, with introductions, published lately 
by Brockhaus in Leipsic. 



92 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



be the crown or capstone of all the 
Vedas, they are called Vedanta, literally, 
" the end of the Vedas/ ' The doctrines 
of these theosophic treatises cannot be 
combined into one coherent philosophi- 
cal system ; they are too disconnected, 
contradictory, and disorderly. And the 
best proof of it is that several very di- 
verse systems of philosophy were, as a 
matter of fact, built upon them. The 
Hindus admit six orthodox systems, the 
chief of which are the Vedanta system 
and the Sankhya system. Here are 
elaborated, with all the art and the tech- 
nical skill of the Indian dialectician, the 
great rude thoughts of the Upanishads. 
To treat of the systems is beyond the 
scope of this brief paper. 

Modern philosophical critics may ad- 
mit or deny the value of the Upanishads 
and of the systems, as speculation ; but 
the loftiness and honesty of purpose of 
these ancient teachers cannot be denied. 
They have never lost sight of the one 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIOXS 



93 



great practical end of all their teaching, 
the liberation of the soul. As illustra- 
tion may serve the final sentence of a 
famous Sankhya book. The author has 
just concluded a long argument, which, 
when turned from Sanskrit into the 
clearest English, is still surpassingly hard 
and knotty reading. Then follows his 
simple but impressive climax: " Be all 
my argument right, or be all my argu- 
ment wrong, the ending of bondage to 
the world is the supreme aim of the 
soul. ,, 

The object of the Upanishads, then, 
is the search after God. The riddle of 
existence is scarcely broached in the 
oldest Veda. To the mystics of the 
Upanishads, the origination of the uni- 
verse out of nothing is the question of 
questions; and if it proved as insoluble 
to them as to us, the grappling with it 
led at least to their one great contribu- 
tion to human thought, the identity of 
the subject with the object, of man with 



94 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



God, of the Atman with Brahman; in 
short, to the idealistic monism of the 
Vedanta system, and the supreme con- 
ception of the All-soul. 

The word atman originally meant 
breath, and so the principle of life, the 
soul, the innermost self. A picturesque 
myth in one of the oldest Upanishads 
naively represents the Atman as a pri- 
meval being of human likeness, and all 
the creatures as proceeding from him by 
his creative act. Little as the gain from 
all this may be, it is yet the starting-point 
of the spiritual pantheism of India. It 
would be giving an epitome of Indian 
theology to explain the famous word 
brahman. At first it meant the power 
of devotion, of prayer, and especially of 
the sacrifice; and, finally, with the inor- 
dinate exaggeration of the sacrifice (as 
hinted above) into a power upon which 
even the gods were conceived as depend- 
ing, Brahman came to be the power 
which is behind both the gods and the 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIOXS 



95 



world, the eternal principle of all exist- 
ence. 

The acme of these doctrines is reached 
in the fusion of the originally subjec- 
tive Atman with the objective Brahman 
into one supreme entity, transcending all 
limitations of space, time, and causality. 
The soul is not different from Brahm, 
because there is nothing existent outside 
of Brahm. The soul is not a transfor- 
mation of Brahm, because Brahm is un- 
changeable. The soul is not a part of 
Brahm, because whatever has parts is 
transitory and suffers change, and Brahm, 
being unchangeable, can therefore have 
no parts. In short, then, the kernel of 
the whole doctrine is the direct imma- 
nency of God, an assumption unproved, 
and yet of profound practical import. 

The central point of all this teaching 
is illustrated in a hundred ways, naive 
and picturesque. We may cite one 
(Deussen thinks it the oldest) passage in 
which the doctrine is set forth. " Ver- 



9 6 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



ily the universe is Brahm: whose sub- 
stance is spirit; whose body is life; 
whose form is light ; whose purpose is 
truth ; whose essence is infinity. This is 
my spirit (or atman) within my heart, 
smaller than a grain of rice, or a barley- 
corn, or a grain of mustard-seed; smaller 
than a grain of millet, or even than a 
husked grain of millet. It is greater 
than the earth, greater than the sky, 
greater than the heaven, greater than all 
the worlds. The all-working, all-wishing, 
all-smelling, all-tasting one, that em- 
braceth the universe, that is silent, un- 
troubled — that is my spirit within my 
heart ; that is Brahm. Thereunto, when 
I go hence, shall I attain. Thus spake 
Shandilya. " 

The chief end of man is salvation, that 
is, liberation from the bonds of death 
and rebirth, the endless rounds of trans- 
migration. This liberation is effected, 
not by faith, but by knowledge, by the 
recognition of the absolute identity of 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



my innermost being with God. What 
now is the way to this knowledge ? For 
on it we must find the basis of the prac- 
tical ethics of the Vedanta. The fallen 
state is the illusion of separation from 
God, and this illusion is fed by the de- 
sires and lusts of the world. Morality, 
therefore, is primarily rather negative 
than positive — the renunciation of the 
lust of the world, of wife, children, pos- 
sessions, in short, of all the great activi- 
ties of life. 

So far as theories go, there is spiritual 
truth on both sides, for Christian and 
Hindu alike, to take and to give. To 
Hindu mysticism and to Christian mys- 
ticism alike are common the most gro- 
tesque fancies and the deepest truths ; in 
both are elements which may prove to be 
of value for our religious life. It may 
be too that some of the Indian theories 
concerning personality when dissociated 
from Indian pessimism shall yet in these 
last days bear fruit. Did the Eastern 
7 



98 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 

mystic so lose himself in the beatific 
vision of God as to have little thought 
for his fellows ? Possibly ; but, per 
contra, are not we so feverishly asserting 
our individuality in all the details of life 
that we never quit the pin-fold in which 
we are confined and pestered ? May not 
each of us learn from the other ? 

There is a Sanskrit work called the 
" Garland of Questions and Answers/' 
in which some Hindu Nicodemus seeks 
to know what it is to be born of the 
Spirit. His question is : 

What lack I yet ? What for my soul remaineth 
To know, that all these longings then may cease ? 

And the answer : 

Salvation, wherein simplest soul attaineth 
The knowledge that doth end in perfect peace. 

And again : 

What must I know, the which, when compre- 
hending, 

Their secret thought from all the worlds I wrest ? 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 99 



And the answer : 

On all-embracing Brahm thy spirit bending, — 
That know, Prime Form of Being, Manifest. 

And we hustling Occidentals marvel and 
say, " How can these things be ? " Mys- 
tical perhaps they are to our Western 
temper of mind ; but are we quite sure 
that our temper is wholly right, and the 
only right one ? In India as well as in 
Palestine was the warning given: " Ex- 
cept ye become as little children." 

As for the Upanishads in practice, we 
little realize in the Occident how holy 
and saintly have been the lives of thou- 
sands of these quiet Vedantists. And 
even in characterizing renunciation as a 
negative virtue, there may be a touch of 
injustice and error. On the other hand, 
if we are right in our ideals of human 
progress, it is hard to see how they have 
been furthered by quietism. " I am 
come," said the greatest of teachers, 
" that they might have life, and that 



ioo THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



they might have it more abundantly." 
But even here again let me warn against 
over-confidence in the infallibility of the 
Occidental standards by which we would 
measure the fulness of life. 

And it is well to remember here that 
— despite all the diversity of dogmas 
and of. metaphysical conceptions, whether 
of Buddhism or Confucianism, whether of 
Christianity or the Vedanta — that the 
way of peace for all is by morality and 
not by immorality, that the ethical ideal 
is essentially the same the world over, 
that virtue is everywhere lovely, or, in 
mystic phrase, that she can quicken our 
spiritual sense until we catch the unheard 
music of the spheres. 

She can teach ye how to climb 
Higher than the sphery chime. 

A change of attitude towards non- 
Christian religions has undoubtedly be- 
gun within Christendom. It is a step in 
advance, clear and great. Among its 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



immediate results there may indeed be 
much unintelligible dabbling in Bud- 
dhism and sundry other " isms " of the 
East, and the growth therefrom of an 
irreverent and weak and flabby eclecti- 
cism ; but these are transient extrava- 
gances. The new habit of mind, if only 
it be informed with honesty and humil- 
ity, is an essential preliminary to the 
best general religious progress. It is 
something which the leaders of religious 
life and thought should welcome as a 
glorious, an inspiring opportunity. 



VI 



CHRISTIANITY 

V 

By Lyman Abbott 

The object of this series of articles is 
to point out what is distinctive in each 
one of the great religions of the world. 
What is thus distinctive in Christianity is 
Jesus Christ. Other religions are greater 
than their founders. Confucianism is 
greater than Confucius, Buddhism than 
Siddartha, Judaism than Moses, Moham- 
medanism than Mohammed. But Christ 
is greater than Christianity ; the Founder 
is greater than the religion which he 
founded. Its accretions are corruptions; 
it might almost be said that its develop- 
ment is degeneracy. The Sermon on 
the Mount is greater than the greatest of 
the creeds ; the Lord's Supper is sublimer 
102 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 103 



in its simplicity than the High Mass in its 
elaboration ; the message and ministry 
of the twelve, with the Master as their 
leader, are larger events in history than 
all the complicated ecclesiasticism of the 
Middle Ages, with its clerical orders and 
sub-orders. 

I. In Christianity the principles of the 
religion are exemplified and the spirit 
of the religion is embodied in a Person. 
The whole duty of the Christian is 
summed up in the Master's command, 

Follow me." The whole creed of the 
Christian is summed up in " Ye believe 
in God, believe also in me." Confucius 
gave precepts whose value is wholly in- 
dependent of the man who gave them ; 
Siddartha is a shadow cast upon the 
clouds — no one can tell how much it re- 
sembles any historical original; Moses is 
avowedly only the interpreter of a law 
whose divine authority derives no sanc- 
tion from the human law-giver; Moham- 
med is a true prophet of monotheism, 



104 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 

but no reader of these pages would wish 
to emulate his life. But Christ is a living 
Person, whose historical reality skepti- 
cism itself no longer doubts, whose au- 
thoritative declarations as a faithful and 
true witness add to the sum of human 
knowledge, and whose life and character 
are both greater and more luminous than 
any report of his precepts which his im- 
mediate followers have preserved for us. 
Are we perplexed as to the meaning of 
any of his directions ? we have but to 
ask an interpretation of his life. " But 
I say unto you, Love your enemies/' 
" If one smite thee on the one cheek, 
turn to him the other also." His own 
treatment of Judas Iscariot, his own en- 
durance of shame and insult in the court 
of Caiaphas, make the enigma clear to us. 

And not only clear; also possible, 
" * Love your enemies; ' that is not hu- 
man nature" — this protest dies away, 
half uttered, upon our lips when we see 
what this Man has done in attestation of 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 105 

the possibilities of human nature. Con- 
fucianism, Buddhism, Mosaism, all pre- 
sent splendid ideals of life ; Christianity 
differs from them less in the ideals pre- 
sented than in the transcendent fact that 
it presents them realized. The divine 
life is no longer a poet's dream or a 
prophet's ecstatic vision of some future 
celestial glory. The kingdom of God 
has come down to earth. The highest 
hope of the idealist is no longer an 
impossible hope ; it is a realized fact in 
human history. Christ is the ideal. To 
be a Christian is to be Christlike ; there 
is nothing higher; when, if ever, all 
humanity becomes Christlike, the king- 
dom of heaven will have come on earth; 
there is nothing beyond. 

Thus Christianity is at once idealism 
and realism in religion combined. It 
commends nothing which it does not 
demonstrate possible. When Christ asks 
his followers, " Can ye drink of the cup 
that I drink of, and be baptized with the 



106 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 

baptism I am baptized with?" inspired 
by his example, and still more by his 
persuasive personality, they reply, " We 
can; " and he responds, " Ye shall/' It 
is this quality of realism in the religion 
of Christ — a religion presented by its 
Founder, not as an impossible ideal, but 
as a reality, not as a vision of a hoped- 
for future, but as the record of un- 
doubted history — which constitutes the 
first distinguishing mark of Christianity. 
Confucianism, summoning its adherents 
to pay veneration to an idealized past, 
Buddhism, bidding its adherents dream 
of an unrealized future, keep their vota- 
ries unchanged from century to century. 
Christ, calling the Christian to an ideal 
which he has realized in his own life, 
responds to every failure and every con- 
sequent discouragement, " You can, for 
I have. What I have done you can do ; 
what I am you can become/ 9 

The followers of Christ, thus inspired 
by an ideal realized in history, rise from 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 107 

every defeat with a new hope of victory 
in their hearts, and go forward from every 
victory inspired to attempt new achieve- 
ment. When they have abolished slav- 
ery, they immediately combine to fit 
the enfranchised for industrial freedom. 
When they have abolished private war, 
they rest not, but gather their forces 
together to abolish international war. 
They are not discouraged in the first case 
because the negro population grows 
faster than the schools, nor in the second 
because imperial Europe, with fanatical 
conservatism, persists in retaining a mili- 
tarism inherited from pagan Rome. 
Nor does the fact that they are a minor- 
ity, even in the community which calls 
itself Christian, abate their courage ; for 
they look back and see what One accom- 
plished with but twelve followers, and 
one of them a traitor. It is true that 
there is industrial servitude in our work- 
shops as well as in the fields of China, 
that there are prostitutes in Christian as 



io8 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



well as in Hindu cities, social caste in 
democratic America as well as in Brah- 
manical India, the spirit of militarism in 
Christian Europe as well as in Moham- 
medan Turkey. But Christianity has 
abolished the worst forms of industrial 
servitude and is ameliorating such as re- 
main ; there are no consecrated prosti- 
tutes in Christendom ; caste exists in spite 
of religion in the United States, because 
of religion in India; the spirit of the 
Cross, patiently if peacefully, opposes 
itself to that spirit of militarism which 
the Crescent inspires and glorifies. 

What is true of Christianity as a social 
force is true of it also as an individual 
life. Its history is written in splendid 
lives. It is the record, not merely of 
great thoughts, but of greater deeds ; it 
is not merely the vision of splendid 
ideals, but the history of achievement, 
marred indeed by many a failure and 
many a blemish, but more splendid than 
any mere ideal, because deeds are always 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



more splendid than dreams. Christian- 
ity is not a history of ethical rules, theo- 
logical doctrines, or ecclesiastical sys- 
tems ; it is a history of living men and 
women ; not a picture of piety, but the 
biography of saints ; not a picture of 
heroism, but a biography of heroes ; not 
a picture of patience, but a biography of 
brave men and women bearing the world's 
burdens. It is not the history of Ro- 
manism and Lutheranism and Puritanism 
and Wesleyanism ; it is the biography of 
Augustine, and William of Orange, and 
John Hampden, and the Methodist pio- 
neers. No other religion has written its 
history in such achievements and such 
biographies. Christianity is an ideal 
realized in the one Christ, and therefore 
in process of realization in Christen- 
dom ; a spirit incarnated in the one Man, 
and therefore in the process of becoming 
incarnated in Humanity. 

II. This realism of religion, which is 
a distinctive characteristic of Christianity, 



no THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



is due to the new power which Christian- 
ity confers upon mankind, or, to speak 
more accurately, to the new revelation 
which it affords of an eternal power. 

That Christianity claims to confer such 
new power upon man is evident from the 
most casual reading of the primitive docu- 
ments. It is implied in the declaration 
of Christ defining his mission: V I have 
come that they might have life, and 
might have it more abundantly. 99 It is 
affirmed by Paul in his definition of the 
Gospel as " the power of God unto sal- 
vation.' ' It is even more explicitly de- 
clared by John : " To them gave he power 
to become the sons of God, even to 
them that believe on his name." But it 
is not only occasionally and incidentally 
claimed for Christianity by its first evan- 
gelists; it is the theme of their teach- 
ing. They are not the framers of a new 
code of rules for the regulation of con- 
duct, nor the teachers of a new system 
of philosophy — though their successors 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS ill 



in the ministry have often been one or 
the other; they are the heralds of a Per- 
son. To understand their message we 
must remember that Christianity came 
to the world as the consummation and 
fulfillment of a precedent religion. One 
characteristic of the Jewish religion was 
its forelooking character. From - the 
promise to Eve that her seed should crush 
the serpent's head to the prophecy of 
the great Unknown Prophet of the Exile 
that the Suffering Servant of the Lord 
should redeem Israel out of all his 
troubles, the Jewish people were taught 
by their prophets to look forward to a 
Deliverer and a Deliverance which should 
bring the kingdom of God on the earth. 
Whatever interpretation we may now 
give to these promises, there is no ques- 
tion, as matter of history, that, in the 
first century of this era, the Jewish peo- 
ple were universally expecting the com- 
ing of a Messiah, an Anointed One, who 
would fulfill the expectation of Israel, 



H2 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



and redeem the nation, if not the world, 
from its sorrows. The burden of the 
preaching of the Apostles is that the 
Messiah has come, and the Day of Deliv- 
erance is at hand. It is not necessary 
to load these pages with quotations or 
even with references. The Apostolic 
sermons reported in the Book of Acts 
are the earliest recorded examples of 
primitive preaching. The burden of 
these sermons is always the same, that 
the Messiah has come, and that the evi- 
dence of his Messiahship is his resurrec- 
tion from the dead. The Epistles of 
Paul are probably the earliest writings 
of the primitive Church. The burden of 
these Epistles is always the same, that 
" the law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus hath made me free from the law of 
sin and death/' so that " we are more 
than conquerors through him that loved 
us/' If we turn to the teaching of 
Christ, we find the same characteristic. 
At the beginning of his ministry, in the 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 113 

synagogue at Nazareth, he reads from an 
ancient prophecy the promise of One to 
come who will proclaim glad tidings to 
the poor, will heal the broken-hearted, 
will proclaim deliverance to the captives 
and recovering of sight to the blind, and 
will lead forth into liberty those that are 
crushed by oppression ; and he declares 
that he has come to fulfill this promise. 
At the close of his ministry, put under 
solemn judicial oath by the high priest, 
and asked if he is the Messiah, the Son 
of the Living God, he replies that he 
is, and seals this claim with the surren- 
der of his life. Modern discovery has 
made it clear that the Fourth Gospel 
was written and published early in the 
second century, if not late in the first 
century, and it contains, in all probabil- 
ity, a report of Christ's life and mission 
furnished by the Beloved Disciple, if not 
actually written by him. But we are not 
left to the Fourth Gospel for evidence 

that Jesus claimed to be the Christ, the 
8 



H4 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



Anointed One, the Saviour of the world. 
This claim is wrought into his teaching 
concerning himself as recorded in the 
Synoptic Gospels, into the Apostolic 
heralding of his Person as recorded in the 
Book of Acts, into the thought and life 
of the earliest churches as reflected in 
the letters of Paul. The post-Apostolic 
writings and the very inscriptions in the 
catacombs illustrate the same claim of 
primitive Christianity. The earliest 
symbol of the Christians, used by them 
apparently as a sort of secret sign or 
watchword, was a fish. This word fish 
is formed in the Greek of the five letters 
which for the English reader we may 
represent thus: I, Ch, Th, U, S. Each 
letter represents a word which we may 
represent in English characters thus: 
Jesous, Christos, Theou, Uios, 
Soter — that is, Jesus, Christ, of God 
the Son, Saviour. This faith in a Person 
who brought a new life into the world, a 
new power to men, an emancipation, an 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



enfranchisement, a deliverance, was the 
creed of the early Church. However 
skeptical one may be concerning the 
truth of this faith, one cannot doubt that 
the faith existed, and was the secret of 
the Church's existence. 

As little can it be doubted that the world 
sorely feels the need of such a power. 
Whatever opinion the skeptic may enter- 
tain concerning the eighth chapter of 
Romans, there are few skeptics who will 
doubt the seventh chapter. " To will 
is present with me ; but how to perform 
that which is good I find not," is the ex- 
perience of all men who possess noble 
ideals. It is only the hopelessly self- 
conceited man to whom this declaration 
is meaningless. Much is said of the 
Gospel as a revelation ; but we do not so 
much need to have new truth revealed 
to us as new power conferred upon us. 
It is easier to see the right than to do 
the right as we see it. Our ideals may 
be, and often are, ignoble, but they are 



n6 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



nobler than our lives. To transmute 
dreams into deeds is the perpetually un- 
solved problem of every noble nature. 
That Christianity has conferred on all 
its votaries the power which man so 
sorely needs no one will claim ; but that 
it has conferred on them new moral 
power, endowing with life, transforming 
the character, and revealed in the con- 
duct, is abundantly illustrated by its his- 
tory: in individual transformations like 
those of Paul the persecutor into the 
Apostle, Augustine the roue into the 
saint, Loyola the soldier into the church- 
man, Luther the monk into the eman- 
cipator, Bunyan the tinker into the 
prophet, Gough the drunkard into the 
temperance reformer ; on a large scale, in 
the transformation of pagan Rome into 
Christian Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon 
race from the freebooters and pirates of 
the eighth century into the pioneers of 
civilization in the nineteenth. It may, 
indeed, be said that the progress is very 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 117 



slow, since it has taken eighteen centu- 
ries to make out of paganism a social 
order so little Christianized as that of 
modern Europe. But it must be remem- 
bered that the present population of 
Europe has been under the influence of 
Christianity, not eighteen centuries, but 
one-third of a century. Progress is nec- 
essarily slow in a world in which every 
thirty-three years a new class comes into 
life to acquire afresh all its knowledge 
and all its virtue. 

However slow that progress may have 
been, it is certain that Christianity is the 
only world-religion which is characterized 
by those transformations of individual 
character which we call conversion, or 
that transformation of national character 
which we call progress. We hear much 
of the progress of humanity; but histor- 
ically it has been confined to Christen- 
dom ; the nineteenth century is much 
glorified, but in China and India the 
nineteenth century does not differ from 



n8 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



the first. Christianity appears to me 
to be the only world-religion which even 
claims ability to make such transforma- 
tions of character, to confer on man 
power to realize his ideals, to convert his 
aspirations into achievement. Neither 
Confucianism, Judaism, nor Mohammed- 
anism can be said even to offer to man 
an addition to his powers, a reinforce- 
ment of his spirit, and an emancipation 
from his bondage. Buddhism, it is true, 
does offer a deliverance; Buddha does 
claim to be a Deliverer from the perpet- 
ual disappointments of life. But, as 
Professor Palmer has recently so clearly 
pointed out, Buddhism prescribes as the 
secret of deliverance the death of desire, 
Christianity proffers the power to fulfill 
aspiration. The rest of the one is the 
rest of death, that of the other is the rest 
of triumphant life. 

III. I have said that this power to real- 
ize ideals which Christianity confers upon 
its adherents is not really new, but only 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 119 



a new realization of a power which is 
eternal ; but this is equally true of that 
increased endowment w T hich knowledge 
confers in the physical realm. Elec- 
tricity is not a new force now first cre- 
ated, but an old force now first discovered 
or revealed. As the nature of electricity 
is revealed to us it becomes a practical 
power in our hands to be employed by 
us. Thus revelation or discovery, 1 while 
it does not add to the powers in the 
universe, increases our capacity to use 
them. The powers in the universe re- 
main unaltered, but our power is in- 
creased. 

In the moral realm the greatest of all 
powers is that of a great personality — 
that which one masterful character exer- 
cises over another character. This is the 
power of the great orator, who sways an 
audience as he will, not by acquired arts 
of rhetoric or elocution — these are only 

1 Synonymous words : to discover is to uncover, to 
reveal is to unveil. 



120 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



his instruments — but by the personal 
character which employs them and is 
communicated by them. It is this which 
makes him what we call— concealing our 
ignorance by the meaningless word — a 
magnetic speaker. This is the secret of 
the great musician. More than the 
flute-like voice of the singer, more than 
the trained fingers of the violinist or the 
pianist, is the man or woman who is in- 
terpreted by voice or instrument. If 
this character is wanting, we may admire 
the technique, but go away untouched, 
saying, " But he had no soul." This is 
the power of the great general — the Little 
Corporal seizing the flag at the bridge of 
Lodi, and by his mere presence convert- 
ing his hesitating soldiers into an irre- 
sistible torrent of brave men ; General 
Sheridan meeting his panic-stricken sol- 
diers fleeing from the field in the Shenan- 
doah Valley, calling to them, " Turn, 
boys, turn ! we are going the other way," 
and, by the power of his infectious 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 121 



courage, converting their panic into an 
enthusiasm of courage, and the rout into a 
victory. This is the secret of the mother's 
power. She goes down in solemn joy 
to that door which swings both ways on 
its hinges, not knowing whether she will 
go out into the unknown, or out of the 
unknown a new life will come to 'her; 
she offers her life in that very hour in 
which she welcomes a new life to her 
keeping; all her motherhood is one life- 
long offering, a transmission of her life 
to the child, whom she endows with 
courage, truth, purity, love, not by her 
skilled teaching, but by the impartation 
of herself ; not by what she says, nor yet 
by what she does, but by what she is. 

Christianity, recognizing this power of 
a great personality, brings to bear upon 
humanity the personality of God. It 
differs somewhat from other world-reli- 
gions in the ideals of human life and 
character which it presents. Yet in the 
main these agree; for the aspirations of 



122 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



humanity are ever alike in their trend, 
though not in their clearness and purity. 
Christianity differs more from other 
world-religions in its doctrine of God. 
Confucianism deifies its ancestors, Bud- 
dhism deifies its dreams, Mohammedan- 
ism deifies its conscience and its self-will ; 
Christianity alone deifies love. But the 
distinctive characteristic of Christianity 
lies, not in its ideals — that is, its laws; 
not in its conception of God — that is, 
in its theology; but in this, that it so 
brings God down to earth, so interprets 
him an Immanuel, a God with us, that it 
discovers or reveals to man this eternal 
but before unknown power, the power of 
a divine personality living among men, 
brooding them, and by direct personal 
influence transforming them. God's 
silent voice transcends the magnetism of 
all world-orators; his inspiring presence 
summons to a courage unparalleled on 
any field of battle ; his brooding care is 
more life-giving than that of any mother. 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 123 



This is, to us who follow Christ and 
believe in him, the meaning of the Incar- 
nation. In vain our imagination endeav- 
ors to realize an " Infinite and Eternal 
Energy," or a n Power not ourselves 
that makes for righteousness/ ' But in 
Christ we see God personified ; brought 
within our vision ; so dwelling among us 
that his personality touches ours and we 
answer to the contact. This is what we 
mean by the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 
He dwells with us and is in us, his Spirit 
so mingling with our spirit that all our 
life is reinforced by his presence, and 
what before was impossible becomes easy. 
This is what we mean by atonement. 
He is at one with us and we are at one 
with him, so that his life flows into us 
and we live by him. This is what the 
Psalmist means when he says, (t By my 
God I have run through a troop, and by 
my God I have leaped over a wall." 
This is what Paul means when he says, 
" I can do all things through him that 



124 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



strengtheneth me." This is what he 
means by saying that we are heirs of God 
and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. We 
inherit God himself, become partakers of 
the divine nature, like Christ are sons of 
God, our life is begotten of God and 
proceeds from him. This is what he 
means by saying that our righteousness 
is of God by faith ; as the listener enters 
into sympathy with the orator, the sol- 
dier with the hero, the child with the 
mother, so we enter into sympathy with 
God — that is faith. As life passes from 
orator to audience, from hero to soldier, 
from mother to child, so it passes from 
God to the human soul— that is grace. 
And this faith which receives and this 
grace which gives find, possibly ana- 
logies, certainly no parallel, in any other 
world-religion. 

To sum all up : the distinctive charac- 
teristic of Christianity is Christ; by 
Christ God is brought to earth, made 
visible, tangible, comprehensible to us; 



THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 



by this contact the divine personality 
comes in touch with us, reinforces our 
spiritual nature, endows us with new 
power, inspires, recreates, transforms ; 
thus empowered, we are able to translate 
our before impossible ideals into realities, 
our dreams into deeds, our aspirations 
into achievements. 



PARABLES 
FOR SCHOOL AND HOME 

By 

WENDELL P. GARRISON 

Author of "What Mr. Darwin Saw," etc., etc. 
With 21 Engravings on Wood done Expressly for the 
Volume by Gustav Kruell. 

12mo, cloth, ornamental, $1*25 

" How to make men think and how to help men think is a 
problem which slowly approaches solution. Progress has gone 
so far that it has substituted children for men in the double 
question adduced, and is now studying the various experiments 
of pedagogues and psychologists. One of these is Wendell P. 
Garrison, and his experiment is shown in a pretty volume, en- 
titled 'Parables for School and Home.' The author is a man 
of wide culture who has a healthful appreciation of humor, 
poetry, art, and music. He loves children, and he believes 
that in their unfolding they can be helped to think, and at the 
same time develop morall)*. 

The so-called 'Parables' are delightful fifteen-minute 
chats. . . . They are the conversations of a gentleman 
with his sons and daughters. The book is handsomely gotten 
up; exquisite illustrations by Gustav Kruell render it an 
artistic as well as a literary treasure. It may be highly recom- 
mended to parents, guardians, and teachers wherever English 
is spoken.'' — Mail and Express, Neiv York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO, 

91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York 



JESUS THE MESSIAH 

By 

ALFRED EDERSHEIM, M,A, 
Some time Grinfield lecturer on the Septuagint 
in the University of Oxford 

An abridged edition of The Life and Times of Jesus the 
Messiah, with preface by Prof. W. Sanday, of Oxford 

Small 8vo, 659 pages, $LG0 

This edition has been carefully abridged from the well- 
known two-volume work of Dr. Edersheim. While the 
larger work will remain, as the late Rev. Dr. Howard 
Crosby, D.D., has said of it, ''an indispensable encyclopaedia 
for a well-equipped minister," the smaller work is intended 
to be used by Sunday-school scholars and teachers and by 
all who desire a book for reading rather than for reference. 

The following are some testimonials to the parent work, 
from prominent clergymen: 

REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D. 
" The best of all the published lives of Christ." 

REV. HERRICK JOHNSON, D.D., Chicago. 
u A vivid, striking, unique and intensely interesting book." 
PROF. SHAILER MATTHEWS, University of Chicago. 
11 There is no work in English, upon this subject, to be 
classed with this of Edersheim." 

REV. JOHN HALL, D.D., New York. 
" It is scholarly, suggestive and valuable. It is specially 
useful in throwing light upon the times of the Saviour's life on 
earth." 

REV. C. H. PARKHURST, D.D., New York. 
"There is no biography of Christ, humanly composed, that 
vies with Edersheim's." 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO- 

9J-93 Fifth Avenue, New York 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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